Alpha and Omega

Alpha and Omega

Year: 2010

Country: US

Genre: computer animated comedy-drama

Director: Anthony Bell and Ben Gluck

Stars: Justin Long, Hayden Panettiere, Dennis Hopper, Danny Glover, Chris Carmack, and Christina Ricci

So today at lunch time I was like "I think I'll watch something on netflix... I turn on the netflix and don't see much... it's between Rango and this Alpha and Omega movie. I remember wanting to watch A&O at some point in my life, so I figured I'll just watch it now, it's short and shouldn't take me too long.

Alpha and Omega is every furry's wet dream.  A bucket-ton of anthropomorphic wolves sing-howling at each other and dancing... I also like how they get married and do other anthropomorphic things... NOT!  Really I should have expected this, but I'll claim didn't know any better.

Your typical Anthropomorphic Wolf art, complete with wolf wang.

The story goes like this, there are 2 types of wolves within each pack, the Alphas who hunt and are superior and strong, and the Omegas who are silly (Really, just silly; they don't give any other trait that these wolves have, just that they are jokers).  An Alpha goes to Alpha school to learn to be a sleek and strong hunter/pack leader.  The Omegas don't do much...  When a certain Alpha named Kate, voiced by Hayden Panettiere, goes off to Alpha school, she's taught how to hunt.  When she returns in the spring her Omega friend, voiced by Justin Long, is pleased to greet her and even tries to play with her, but Kate's totally Alpha now and has no time for fun and games...  Kate's dad, voiced by Danny Glover, is trying to unite their pack with the Eastern pack by marring Kate off to their Alpha, Garth, voiced by Chris Carmack.  Garth is awesome in every way an Alpha should be except he sucks at howling.

Party on, Garth!

The wolves have this creepy Howling ceremony and it gets a little... disturbing... I guess... I mean the wolves are singing with human voices and dancing on two legs... kinda weird if you ask me.  Anyway Kate finds Garth's howl to be lacking and wanders away from him.  She runs into her Omega pal, Humphrey (get it? HUMPhrey?) and they get tranq darted and shipped from Jasper Forest in Canada to Idaho (I da what?) at Sawtooth National Recreation area!  They are apparently supposed to "repopulate" and since they are an Alpha and an Omega, the two wolves say they can't.  They run into a bald golf-playing French(Canadian) Goose, voiced by Larry Miller, and his caddy duck, voiced by Eric Prince.  Kate and Humphrey need to find out where they are.  They see the birds and say "Let's ask them, and if they don't help us, we'll eat them!"  Wow.  That's a touch dark.  The birds are rightfully afraid of the wolves at first, but then agree to help them get home.

Pretty Lilly!

Meanwhile back at West Pack, it's discovered that Kate is missing... no one even mentions that Humphrey is missing, but he's an Omega, what should we care?  Winston blames Garth's dad, Tony, voiced by Dennis Hopper, and Tony blames Winston.  It's agreed that in two days if Kate is not back to marry Garth then the two packs will fight.  In the meantime Garth spends time with the West pack and Kate's Omega sister, Lilly, voiced by Christina Ricci.  What do you think happens? Garth falls in love with Lilly.  Honestly Lilly is my favorite character.  She's pretty and doesn't really do much anthropomorphic stuff like the other wolves.

And back to Kate and Humphrey, yeah they do get home, just in time for the big fight.  Right before they get home, Humphrey starts howling with Kate... I guess the secret's out.  He loves her.  She's betrothed though! Oh no! shenanigans!!  Since Kate has returned, she and Garth will marry the next morning.  They go through this weird wedding ceremony and right before Kate sniff's Garth's nose, she backs out... Seriously? I mean she didn't even think to stop the wedding sooner? Anyway, "blah, blah, blah, this is an outrage!" An Alpha and an Omega can never marry... well what they really mean is they shouldn't "repopulate"  Kinda, adult for a kids movie... so the two packs fight and a caribou stampede happens.  Winston and Tony are caught in the middle of the stampede so Humphrey and Kate must save the pack leaders... Which they do and Kate gets trampled in the process... but this is a kid's movie, no one dies.  Kate and Winston live happily ever after and Lilly and Garth live happily ever after and there's caribou for everyone.

The art is pretty, the animation studio is called Crest Animation Studio... I don't think they are like Crest the toothpaste, but still, they are lesser known than... well... Dreamworks or Pixar, but they aren't a bad studio.  They are just a small studio with 8 movies, including this one and two in the works for 2012 and 2013, including... oh dear lord... Alpha and Omega 2.... just... promise me it'll be a direct to dvd movie?  Please...  Ahem... The music is nice and fitting for the scenes... The voice acting is surprisingly good, half the time I forget I'm listening to goofy-looking Justin Long.  Perhaps he should continue a voice acting career.  If you gotta watch this movie, just try not to take it too seriously.  Which is easy to do with names like Tony, Kate, Garth, and Humphrey... Seriously? Who picked these names? They are kinda ridiculous!

All in all the movie's a little creepy... I just don't know.  It's a nice story and the art is very beautiful, but I'm just creeped out because of all the anthropomorphic wolves...  I swear I just watched a soft-core anthropomorphic wolf porno... So disturbed...

I forgot to mention how much I hate the West Pack's Female Alpha, Kate's Mom.  She's kind of strange and bitchy... She is a fan of ripping body parts off other wolves and stuffing them down their throats... I swear, she's the villain in this movie.  She's scary and off the wall crazy... Plus her hair is down right just... ugh... Oh yeah and the hair these wolves have is all part of the anthropomorphic shit, and I really think it's wrong and disturbing.

Beneath a Steel Sky

The Tonnina here!  I'm reviewing an older PC game for distopia month!

It's Foster and Joey!

Beneath a Steel Sky is a game that came out in March, 1994.  It was Developed by Revolution Software and Published by Virgin Interactive.  It's a point-and-click adventure game, my first one actually.  One of the interesting things about this specific adventure game is you can die (and die you will if you're not clever in solving the puzzles!)  The game is set in an unknown point in the future in Australia, Earth has been significantly damaged, possibly by pollution and/or nuclear fallout.  How do we know it's Australia? (There's never any date or place announced) Because the main character is named after Fosters, the beer. (I'm dead serious! Check this video of the intro out at 3:23) Oh and I guess cause he was taught to hunt kangaroos...

It's Australian for BEER!

Robert Foster and his faithful companion Joey (Kangaroo joke?) are basically kidnapped and taken by a helicopter to Union City.  The chopper crashes and Robert lives, runs away and now is a terrorist, but this title doesn't last for long.  Rob uses his quick thinking to get out of a jam and find a "shell for Joey.  Joey changes his robot shell 4 times in this game, he is entertaining, though, in all forms... Foster runs into a lot interesting characters in his short adventure to ground level.

You can see the many levels of Union City from this rather dangerous fire escape!

The game touches on a caste system.  There's levels of LINC within the city and if you screw up, you are D-LINC'd and end up at level 0.  Level 8 is the highest level mentioned as it is the level required to get to ground level.  Kind of like a reverse penthouse.  Yes, eventually you get down to ground level so you do get to level 8!  You can see how the world changes as you progress down the city. The first level you are in is industrious and ugly.  The second level is okay, less industrial but still not 100% clean.  The ground level is picturesque and beautiful but it still has it's own secrets and shadiness.  The very virtual part of the game, called LINC space, is very... Nineties to say the least... ever see the movie "The Lawnmower Man?" Me neither, but my parents had the movie and the back of the box showed scenes from a virtual reality (I think) and it kinda looked like that.  The last part of the game is all labratory-ish. 

Top level

Middle level

Ground level

LINC space

It's really a beautiful game, the art and the small bits of animation are very well done!  This game won "Best Dialog" (PC Gamer) and "Best Adventure" (Golden Joystick Awards) in 1995.  Many gamers claim this is the BEST adventure game in existence.  With a bucket ton of positive review scores (From 95% to 86%) it's no surprise why this game is so well received!

Post-Apocalyptia never looked so pretty!

This game is pretty short, I completed it in about 5 hours.  It's fun though... very challenging and actually makes you think.  You have to look really hard for many of the clues/items you are going to use.  The best part of this game is the dialog.  This game was released in a few different countries and I'm sure there's slightly different text/dialog for each countries versions.  I suggest playing the game with both text AND speaking.  It's much better that way.  Most of the voice acting is rather British sounding.  Of my count only one of the characters you encounter is actually Australian.

Some of the humor...

I won't give away the ending but I do want to let you know that the game does get a tad dark in the end.  Don't save in the last room either, the game is glitched and you will not be able to recover it.  Don't feel bad about looking things up either, the game is very good at hiding tools and materials you will need to continue on.  And there's only one point where you must combine two items to get a new tool, so I'll give you that one hint!

Warning, there's some photographic nudity... and this scene is too funny!

So check out this awesomely fun game! Where can you find it? Well, gog.com is offering it for free, that's where I downloaded my copy... It's also available on iOS in the Apple App Store (The photos with the blue icons in the corners on this review are from that 2009 version of the game!)  It's a wonderful way to spend an afternoon.  It's funny, clever, and kept me thinking!  There are rumors for a sequel out there... I do hope they make the sequel because it's an amazing game!

ESPN Radio

As a female, I have got to be in the minority when it comes to ESPN Radio's audience.  BUT SERIOUSLY, STOP WITH ALL THE TESTOSTERONE COMMERCIALS!!

Forget Dr. Pepper 10, ESPN Radio is not for women!

 We, my husband and I, have been carpooling for the past school semester (3 months) and in the morning, for most of the 3 months we've been driving together, we were listening to AM 1350 because they had Dan Patrick on.  Suddenly, last week, the AM 1350 station switched to a country station, so no more Dan Patrick! Sad Face!

I love me some DP show!

We have XM radio in the Subaru but not in my Kia Rio.  We can still catch the Dan Patrick show on Fox Sports radio on XM, but when we drive my car, which is most of the time, we can't.  Even though my husband has XM on his smartphone, it doesn't have the Fox Sports radio station.  So instead we've been catching Colin Cowherd in the morning.  I have no gripe with his show.  He's got interesting things to say about sports of all types.  I'm okay with his stamps.com commercial that I've heard about 5 times in 2 days of listening... The one thing I can not STAND is all the testosterone supplements commercials.
I know, I'm not the target demographic, but damn it I get enough of this bull at home on the tv... What with all the "Low T", cialis and viagra commercials... I really don't need to hear it on the road either.

The best photo I could find of Cowherd.

"Men as you get older do you notice you have trouble getting up in the morning? How about getting it up at all?"  Yes ESPN Radio, as a woman I'm totally having trouble getting it up, seeing as how my "erectile tissue" is small and low in testosterone...
Honestly, I should just accept that they probably won't do anything about it... I'm just one female listener.. what do they care?  But really I'm just annoyed that it's on at 8am anyway... I mean they ban those type of commercials on tv; they are only on from 9pm to 4am, I think.  Most of the people listening are older males, but not all the people listening fit that bill.


PLUS Fox Radio, or at the very least Dan Patrick, actually advertises sports related things like Buffalo Wild Wings.  I've yet to hear a sports related ad on ESPN Radio...

The wings... Oh god, the wings...

H.P. Lovecraft's At The Mountains of Madness

The Tonnina here to review H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness

The man himself, H.P. Lovecraft

I’ve never read any of Lovecraft’s works, but I’m very familiar with C’thulhu and Yog-sothoth.  I needed to read this tale of terror for my Literature class.  Well, technically I just needed to read a short story and I knew that we had a little book with some of Lovecraft’s short stories.  This was the first story in my little book.  The other stories, which I hope to read eventually too, are The Shunned House, The Dreams in the Witch-House, and the one I REALLY want to read: The Statement of Randolph Carter.  You will probably hear about these tales of terror from me eventually as well.

The cover of the book I have.

So At the Mountains of Madness is a very interesting story.  It’s not really that scary in the sense that you aren’t bombarded with zombies or bloody things.  But it is scary because this place, these mountains, could exist.  

The story is told by a geologist named William Dyer, he’s part of an expedition to Antarctica where they will be exploring more of this continent for prehistoric evidence about how the earth was way back when.  He heads out with many other professors from the Miskatonic University to discover what they can from the barren icy wastes that is Antarctica.

Basically what happens is the team of professors split up.  One group, lead by Professor Lake, ends up finding some strange green soap stones that are not in “normal” shapes.  They are in the shape of a five pointed star, but the tips are broken off.  The expedition turns odd when they find a cavern under the ice filled with… well… Things.  The scientists pull the Things up and try to dissect them and investigate them.  A crazy wind storm happens and Dryer must find what happened to the other team.  When he tells the reader what happened, he basically repeats what he told the men at his camp.  After that he goes into grotesque detail about what they really found at Lake’s camp. From there, the tale gets really “Lovecraftian”.

This does have something to do with the story...

I’m not going to spoil the story for those of you who haven’t read it.  I will say though, there are freaking blind albino penguins in this story.  They are my favorite thing in the book, as weird as that is...  It’s an amazing novella and keep in mind that it’s not gory.  I’m not even a fan of horror, I have an over-active imagination, but this tale didn’t bother me.  I love it.  It’s just scary enough to keep the reader engaged.

One thing I suggest.  DON’T look up photos of the “creatures” in this story until AFTER you’ve read Lake’s description in the book.  Try and imagine what the “creatures” look like before you see the photos that show up on a Yahoo! Images search.  I pictured them a little differently than what I saw online, but they were really REALLY close, which just goes to show how amazing Lovecraft’s writing is.  You can use his words to paint a picture of what you are reading.  I like that a lot about his words. 

I look forward to reading more of Lovecraft’s works, since this was my first introduction to him.  This story is apparently his longest work too.  It’s nice to start with the longest one (only 110 pages in my tiny book) and then go on towards the shorter works.

So check out At the Mountains of Madness sometime. Let me know if you have read it, and what you think of the story!  See you next review!!

Intro

Hello! The Tonnina here!!
Let me introduce you to my new reviewing blog.  I'm going to be reviewing all sorts of things from video games to movies, from food to drinks, from vacations spots to cars... Pretty much anything that has tickled my fancy, or not, and I deem it worth of a review will get reviewed!
There's no real method to my madness about this.  I'm just going to write about something I liked or didn't like and why I felt the way I did about it!  I hope you all enjoy some feminine thoughts on things here at Geek Juice.