Kevin Reviews Things: Florida

Kevin Brown reviews things for his site.  The site is aptly named KEVIN REVIEWS THINGS. We like them so much that we poach his content once a week and post it on Walk in Radio. Go check out his site. Now.

While global warming is eventually going to end all life as we know it (tough break), this has been an unseasonably nice winter.  And for that, I suppose global warming deserves a mild thank you.  (Half of a rose, maybe.)  But “warmer than usual” in New York is still coat and long-sleeves weather in early March.  And because I’m a minor league baseball announcer, I’m in Florida for the week for the Washington Nationals’ spring training.  Now that is warmer than usual.

This is, I believe, the sixth time I’ve been to Florida.  I’ve been to Disney World twice, when I was in first grade and eighth.  I’ve come down here to broadcast a Syracuse football game and a High Point basketball game, and this is my second trip to spring training.  And every minute of the first five times has been just glorious.  I’m not sure if trees actually grow in Florida or if people just put in thousands of artificial palm trees, but you can’t walk ten feet without running into one of these things.  There is nothing to see while driving down the highways except for palm trees and, occasionally, water.  And it is always 70 degrees or warmer.  I honestly do not believe there is a better place on Earth.

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Movie Review- Project X

Last night two of my buddies and I decided to go watch Project X. We all went in with different expectations. One of us expected it to be awesome, one of us expected it to be just another terrible movie with a great trailer, and one of us expected it to be hilarious.

We were all wrong.

Lets get it straight right off the bat. Project X is not an awesome movie, nor is it terrible or hilarious. Project X is best described as pure fun.

The movie is about two losers throwing a 17^th birthday party for their other loser friend, Thomas. They decide to chronicle the events of the party by videotaping the whole thing. After about ten minutes of some so-so acting, story, and camera work, the party finally begins.

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Kevin Reviews Things: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Was this written before the Acadamy Awards? Yes. Are we still posting it and presenting it as new content? Also yes. But we're not just lazy, I just watched this movie and felt the EXACT same way as our resident reviewer so enjoy a nice rant about this awful movie.

I was going to review the Academy Award nominations today, but two things have stopped me.  Number One: I realized that by reviewing the Oscar nominations, I would basically have to fill in my own alternatives as a solution – otherwise, I’d be attacking things without evidence of a better idea.  Number Two, and the more important of the two things: I watched Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close last night, and I am ready to rant.  It was, and pardon the pun, but I can’t stop myself from doing this so I’m just going to go ahead and do it now, extremely manipulative and incredibly atrocious.  Let’s review, shall we?

The Oscar nominations for Best Picture are hardly, if ever, perfect.  This year’s nine nominations are no different – but ultimately it’s a fairly understandable roster.  Statistically speaking, most of the nominees score well over the 70% threshold on Rotten Tomatoes.  Two of them which are close to the mark are big-time crowd-pleasers in The Help and War Horse – you can certainly understand, if not necessarily agree with, their selections.

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Kevin Reviews Things: Warrior, The Movie

We here at Walk In Radio love the website Kevin Reviews Things. Particularly because once a week he allows us to be lazy and not write any blogs.  Today, Kevin provides us his look at the most underrated movie of this year, Warrior.  Enjoy. And go visit his site.

If there’s a Sports Movie Cliché Checklist, Warrior earns just about a perfect score.  Underdog looking to beat improbable odds?  Check.  Evil Russian?  Check.  Wife who doesn’t want her husband to risk their lives with a fight?  Check.  There’s a “just give me a chance” scene, a few “how much pain can one man take?” scenes, financial troubles…on paper, it sounds like a thrill-less cliche’ fest.  Don’t be fooled.  Warrior is a dynamite film, one that takes a story on a smaller scope and places it into a much more epic setting, one that will absolutely take your breath away in its thrilling conclusion.

Warrior doesn’t reinvent the wheel, and anyone with half a brain can figure out the general poltline – but it’s still best not to know much going on.  (Avoid the trailer if you haven’t seen it yet, because you’ll know the whole movie in the span of two and a half minutes.)  The basics: Warrior follows two brothers, Tommy Riordan (Tom Hardy) and Brendan Conlon (Joel Edgerton).  There’s a reason for the different last names – the boys have had a troubled past, thanks to their alcoholic father Paddy (Nick Nolte), and Tommy’s adopted his late mother’s last name as his own.  After 14 years apart, Tommy shows up on his father’s Pittsburgh doorstep one day – but not to reconcile their relationship as father and son.  A former star wrestler, Tommy is preparing to train for Sparta, a 16-man UFC tournament in Atlantic City with a $5 million prize, and he wants his dad to train him – but only as a trainer.

Across the state in Philadelphia, Brendan’s in a happy marriage with two daughters, but he’s struggling to pay enough money to keep his house.  Brendan’s a former UFC fighter but a current physics teacher, with no plans to get back in the cage – until the bank comes calling and he’s out of options.  He begins training as well, just for some low-money underground fights, but fate, as it always does in fighter movies, has other ideas.

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Kevin Reviews Things: Mountain Dew Voltage

Walk in Radio is happy to introduce yet another contributing writer to the blog bullpen (We're stockpiling talent like the 1997 Florida Marlins).  Kevin Brown runs a website called Kevin Reviews Things.  As you can imagine, on this site, Kevin reviews things.  It's just that simple people. Anyway, he's funny, he went to Syracuse and he brings a fresh voice to Walk In.  We hope to post a blog each week that has been featured on Kevin's site. If you like his stuff, go read the rest of it here.  This week, Kevin reviews Mountain Dew Voltage.  Enjoy.

I haven’t had soda since I was around the age of five.  (OK, straight soda…I’m not counting a rum and coke.)  Why do I remember this so vividly?  I have no idea.  I was somewhere in a New York City warehouse for some reason, for some short film or something that one of my cousins was directing or producing or something.  As you can tell, this is probably the least detailed story you will ever hear.  All I remember is the warehouse and the cup of diet Coke from McDonald’s that my mom gave me.  I hated it.  Far from quenching my thirst, it repelled it.  And I’ve stayed away from the carbonated creations since.  This turned me into that kid at birthday parties who would take a cup and sneak off to the water fountain, rather than indulge in one of the seven bottles of Coke or Sprite.  (You know what I’m talking about.)

But I couldn’t resist Alex Rosenthal’s gloriously random request on Facebook – to review Blue Raspberry Mountain Dew.  I have never had any sort of Mountain Dew.  Not even the Mountain Dew-flavored Slurpees at 7-Eleven, and trust me, I made a living at the Slurpee machine in high school.  (How was I a good runner again?)  But off I trudged after work to my local CVS to pick up a bottle of carbonated sugary death.  As George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. “

(I have heard about 1,000 different versions of this quote, and I have no idea who George Santayana is, though he makes me want to sing "Got a Blue Mountain Soda" to the tune of Black Magic Woman.  But wikiquote says this is so, and so it must be.)

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