Welcome to the Next-Gen

I want to preface this latest blog entry by saying the highlight of my weekend (other then the fact that I do not have to work this weekend, which is awesome my first weekend off in a while) was going to the "soft" opening of a new bar in Scottsdale called the Yard House. Its pretty much in Scottsdale Fashion Square and they have 177 different types of draft beer, anything you could ask for. Sure it may be a little pricey, but that's a hell of a selection (Yes you could say I am promoting the bar, hopefully I get some free beer out of this. But I wont). Anyway I ended up not going, why? Because on Friday night my Xbox 360 came in the mail and basically that is what I have been doing all weekend.
First off xbox 360 is pretty freaking awesome. The graphical power is phenominal and the environments it creates for its games are a sight to behold. It also boasts a ton of online features and content download (i.e demos) so you can have hours of fun (wait am I promoting Microsoft too? I swear I am not just a shameless promoter. Umm, forgot about that random add that appears above this blog). I currently have two games for it, Madden 2006 and NBA live 2006. I must say the games are cool, the graphics are great, but its very easy to tell that these games were rushed. They lack alot of gameplay modes that their xbox counterparts had (NBA live 06, for example, doesn't have all-star weekend or a franchise mode and a really shitty free thow shooting system). The default camera angles on both games are tailored to showing off the graphical power and not so much to what the best viewpoint would be for gaming. Overall though its a good first go around, with Madden taking the cake. NBA live 2006 for the 360 is an inferior game compared to its old school xbox counterpart. Madden 06 for the 360, however, is an amazing game with some really cool new features added. I am sure the 2007 versions of both these games will be awesome.
Okay for those keeping score, I passed on going to the bars this weekend and have a social life in order to play video games. Sounds nerdy, hey it was special circumstances. I did get a chance to see Glory Road, however. Here is my review:

Glory Road follows the same old story line of every movie of its kind: mistfit group of guys come together to form a team, they get to know each other while having a few laughs, their coach is to hard on them and they struggle a little at first. They then come together, which is followed by a montage of them winning games then have the scene were something goes horribly wrong and they start to lose a few games. Then they have the big team blow out and everything is better and they go on to pull an amazing upset of some sort.
Well I must say Glory Road follows this storyline EXACTLY (so does the Miracle) but that's okay because its based on a true story and its just good. I don't care that I knew what was going to happen or it followed the same old storyline, its still a good storyline and it is still entertaining to watch. Plus in what other movie to you get to see such NBA greats as Jo Jo White and Pat Riley take on the protagonists? The answer is you don't. After seeing this movie though it makes you think a few things: David Latten (center for Texas Western) was the second coming of Wilt, Jo Jo White and Pat Riley might be the greatest basketball players in history, Billy Jo (the Texas Western guard) might be the greatest defensive stopper in basketball history. Overall I say it was a good movie and its worth the price of admission.

So before the movie started I saw a preview for the new movie, Akeelah and the Bee. I must say this movie looks like it could be one of the funniest movies ever, and not because its a comedy. The movie is about Laurence Fishburne (you know, Morphus) coaching a young black girl to the top of the spelling world, the Spelling Bee Championship. I cant even describe why this move sounds so hilarious, so I advise you if you have some free time to watch the trailer.
(upon further review that trailer on IMDB is not the one I saw in the theater and therefore is not even nearly as funny as the long one I saw. I advise you to track this done and watch because oh man its high comedy.) Well I guess ill try to explain it to you anyway. The trailer starts off with Fishburne at some random junior high watching a po dunk spelling bee, which makes me think he scouts random high schools for National Spelling Bee Talent which makes the movie awesome enough. ONce Akeelah wins the school spelling bee, FIshburne challenges her to spell a very hard word which she aces while trying so hard that she has a constipated look on her face. Then she runs out of the room because she is ashamed of her "gift". Fishburne tracks her down and becomes her spelling coach. She then goes through a rigours training regimine in which Fishburne tells her she will learn 100 new words a day and gives her a dicitionary in order to help her practice. But the practice gets to much for her and she starts to break down. Then she goes to the National Spelling Bee but realizes it is hard for her, a black girl, to compete in a white man's world (apparently the National Spelling Bee is the white man's world.) But she pushes through and she inspires younger black girls so much that in the trailer one proclaims "Im going to enter the bee next year!" And this is all in just the trailer! How funny could this movie be?

Okay kids I think that is all I have for you tonight. If any of you loyal readers have Xbox live (360 style) then hit me up we should game on the internet sometime.

Later