Author: Daniel Baruela

This Week on: Battlestar Galactica – Dirty Hands

Um… hey, you guys? Can we stop having sucky episodes of BSG? It would be really appreciated. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am in Season Three. Sure, it started off well, but these past few weeks… A Day In the Life, The Woman King…uh, no thanks. I’m all for drama, but can something happen? Can the story move on?

This week: Chief Tyrol is put in charge of a tylium processing plant that’s been less than cooperative lately. Surprise ending! (Or not.)

Family Feud (-)

Name a great game show with a less than great video game adaptation.

Let me start off with this: I love game shows. I used to play Wheel of Fortune on my cousin’s NES. After that it was Wheel of Fortune for my Super Nintendo, and one of the best parts of getting cable television was getting the Game Show Network. I still go over to my friend’s house to play Jeopardy! on her NES. I’m even going to be spending a day of my Spring Break to go watch The Price is Right before host Bob Barker retires. I’m not saying no to this game because it’s a game show game. I’m saying no because it’s a terrible adaptation of the show.

The game show is basically a quiz to see if you have your finger the pulse of modern society. And normally, it does so pretty well. However the game pulls it off poorly. Sure, the basic structure of the game is preserved, however, the graphics and execution just turns me off to playing the game any longer then I had to. For one thing, the game lacked the show’s hosts. Richard Karn, Louie Anderson, no one. Instead, we have Todd Newton, who has never hosted Family Feud. Second, even if it had a representation of one of the hosts, he would have been unrecognizable. The human models were horrid. The voice acting was also terrible. It was pretty annoying to hear the same question asked 10 times a row without any variation of banter.

On the bright side, after you get past those things, the gameplay felt alot like watching the show. You were given a topic, and you typed in your answer. Pretty straight forward. And the stage and game-related graphics were true to the show. Sound effects, like the all important buzzer, were perfect.

Overall, I’m sad to give this game a minus. But I certainly hope that another Family Feud game is released that deserves the name.

Nanny McPhee (+)

A mysterious nanny shows up to help out a widowed father who must remarry before the end of the month or lose custody of his seven children.

It’s hard for me to believe that I enjoyed this movie. It’s clearly a children’s (ahem, I mean “family”) film. A single father needs to find a wife so that his seven, very badly behaved children can remain together. Helping out is the magical Nanny McPhee, whose special tactics not only keep the children in line, but teach them the importance of manners and respect. How could I possibly enjoy a movie like this? They’re teaching etiquette for goodness sakes! There is a babysitter with witch-like power involved. This movie should not be anything I even like.

How did this come to be? Start off with Colin Firth (oh, he’s so dreamy) as Cedric Brown, the likable father trying to keep his family from falling apart. He even keeps his dead wife in the loop by looking to her memory for advice. Emma Thompson is the titular Nanny McPhee, and why the hell not, throw in Angela Lansbury as the evil Great Aunt Adelaide who is trying to split up the family. Their performances, while might not be the greatest of their lives at a critical level, are appropriate for this movie. They bring an air of fairy tale charm that helps to raise my appreciation for what might be an otherwise no enjoyable flick. The children’s acting is acceptable, but you can’t really expect too much from them, because, after all, they’re still just children. But still, totally acceptable.

Just because something is a family movie, it doesn’t mean you should rule it out. You should give this one a shot, I know I don’t regret it.