Top 3 Halloween Horror Movies

Halloween has finally arrived and with it comes a mob of scary decorations and small children begging for candy. Not only does Halloween make everything just a little bit scarier, it makes it the perfect time to watch horror movies. These days many of the new horror movies that have been released have been met with pretty scary reviews, with most of them following the same cookie cutter “Possession” or “Ghost haunts house” themes, not many of them stand out above the rest. Now I have to warn you that all of my suggestions are rated R, but the content in these movies isn’t too horrible for today’s standards, with some of it being so bad it’s funny. But if you really want to find good horror movies, be prepared to take a trip back 30-40 years for the scare of your life as I list off my personal favorite horror movies to watch near Halloween.

            #3. The Friday the Thirteenth series. A blast from the past, the Friday the Thirteenth series has everything a good horror movie should have. It combines good suspension with cheesy yet brutal violence and snappy dialogue to create the perfect Halloween flick. With its hulking hockey mask clad, machete wielding villain endlessly slaughter the teens that have dared venture into his camp, it makes for a good time. And although the visuals aren’t groundbreaking or revolutionary compared to today’s movies, it makes up for it in spades, with the series being held responsible for creating the slasher genre.

            #2. Nightmare on Elm Street. Next on my countdown is a movie that followed in my previous selections footsteps. After the release of “Friday the Thirteenth” many other studios rushed to follow up and try to get in on the huge public outcry for the slasher genre. Many of these failed, but a few shined above the rest, like Nightmare on Elm Street. Now what sets this series apart from The Friday the Thirteenth series was its tone, changing from horribly frightening to comical and almost light hearted. This time our series revolves around a child molester who was burned to death when the parents of his victims found out and came after him. But death was not the end for Mr. Kruger and he came back with a vengeance of the now grown children of the street he once terrorized by sneaking into their dreams that killed them in it and in real life. Its popularity can be seen by the almost worldwide iconic glove that he wore while carrying out his plans. If you haven’t seen it I highly recommend you do.

            #1. The Chainsaw Massacre. This movie may be the most iconic of the bunch, spawning multiple sequels and remakes even today, about 40 years after the original debuted. But even though some of them weren’t half bad, the best still lies with the original movie. With it being the first of its kind, it shocked audiences around the globe with its violence and horror inducting character with seemingly no motives other than to exterminate his “visitors” with his trusty chainsaw. With great casting and superb effects for the times, this movie puts chills down your spine now more than ever.

           

T.V vs The Internet

The internet has slowly over the last 10 years become one of the most widely used and the most influential invention of the late 20^th and early 21th century. With its coming, it has replaced/ made easier so many things we once used day to day. But is the Internet going to replace television?  Here are the facts and you make the decision.

                The internet has streamlined many things that once took quite a long time to do, and you would think that by now it would have replaced T.V. I mean not only is the internet faster, it can also stream videos in seconds, and instead of waiting 3 days for that episode of The walking dead that you missed, you can just go onto the site and watch it then. Another reason you may have watched the T.V in the past is for coverage on the big game, but now you can watch the game right on your computer. And unlike the television, where you need a console to play games, as soon as you buy a computer and hook it up to the internet, your set for all your gaming related needs.

                And now here is what the television has going for it. T.V has been around for 60 years and has had 60 years to tweak and perfect it. It has certainly come a very long way from the tiny boxes from our past. As I mentioned before, although the internet has ease of accessibility, not everyone has it. More people in the world have accesses to a television then the internet, because all you need is power, no need for a router or modem. And while you can watch episodes of shows on the internet, the show always debuts on television first. Piracy is a big crime on the internet, and is almost always not worth the risk when you can just watch your shows right on the T.V.

Well I hope after hearing the facts on T.V and the Internet you can make the decision of which is better than the other.

PS4 vs. XBOX ONE

Tis the season for a multitude of games and new gaming consoles. But this season is a special one with the introduction of the next generation of gaming consoles. The consoles in question, The PS4 and the Xbox 1, have been highly anticipated and both boast their own type on special qualities and advantages over there competitor. I will be explaining both, and I hope this will allow you to pick a side.

            The PS4 is the next console that will be released by Sony. Following the trend of sticking an ever growing number after the words PS (which stand for Play Station), this new console will be the 4^th in its line. Its predecessor, the PS3, was met with very high praise for its free online capabilities and overall superb graphic capabilities. The PS4 follows suit with this trend, boasting some of the best graphical capabilities in the market today, only being outclassed by computers which can cost 5-10 times as much. Not only making gains in the visual department, the company boast a personal experience with the console as well, with the PS4 tracking both the controller in a gamer's hand, as well as their face. They also want you to experience the full effect of the console without having to pay for it, and they offer almost all of their online services (Netflix, online gameplay, and to play free to play games) for free with no extra charge to the user. This feature has been consistent with the PlayStation line, and will not change for this one. The PS4 will also be able to play any used game from any outside source, be it your friends or a game you bought for a lower price at a retail location such as GameStop or Video Games Etc. The console will be shipping out in November this year and will be priced modestly at $399.

            In the other corner lies the Xbox 1, which was made and designed by Microsoft. Like the PS4, the Xbox 1 follows its predecessors footsteps in name, albeit ditching the 360 idea and dumbing it down to just 1. The Xbox 360 was the most popular/recognizable console on the market, with its early access to games and DLC, to its iconic controller and white sphere X marked logo. But how does the new Xbox compare with the PS4? One of the main differences is price. Unlike its completion, the Xbox 1 will be priced at $499, $100 more than its competition. This difference may not seem like a huge leap, but to its target audience, high school/college students, $100 is a pretty big increase on something that’s not a necessity. The Xbox 1 also had some extremely hard backlash from the gaming community, once mandating a 24-hour online check in and restrictions on used games. These statements became so controversial, that Microsoft had to quickly resolve and changed the system to be compatible with used and games and got rid of the check in. Graphic wise, the Xbox 1 matches the PS4 in strength and capacity, and includes a huge 500GB memory just to begin with, swamping the PS4’s measly 8GB space. It also includes a build in blue ray player, the first of its kind in the Xbox line.

            After reading the facts about each console, I hope that you can decided which of them you will be asking for Santa this year.

 

Is ask.fm good or bad?

Ask.fm has become one of most popular things to do on twitter. What it does is it lets people make anonymous accounts to ask people questions. The website then tweets out the question and the user’s response with it. While this may seem like a fun thing to do with friends, it can get out of control and the use of not knowing the names of the askers may cause bullying to spike.

 

            Many of times, I have gotten on to twitter and watched my feed spit out a few dozen ask.fm’s. Many of these are pretty funny and enjoyable, but every time I see 10 new ones, I see at least 2 bad ones. With the animosity of the website, it makes it easier to bully fellow students without fear of repercussion. Since people don’t know who you are, you can bully people by asking them mean questions or putting others down.

            While the majority of ask.fm can be quite fun and enjoyable, making it easier to get to know people, there’s always people who bully others and ruin it for everyone else.

 

Gravity Review

Gravity has pushed the limits of reality, with its effects making me question what is real and what isn’t. The movie itself was 4 and a half years in the making, the directors wanted to make sure that every single detail was perfect, with its computer animation mixed with principle photography making the film seem as real as a film has come close to.

            The movie begins with 2 astronauts, played by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, working on a broken satellite. Unfortunately there work was cut short when debris from a destroyed Russian satellite hits there ship and catapults them into space. They are then put in a race against time was there oxygen is being slowly drained away, and the same debris coming right around to hit them again in only 90 minutes. They must use their knowledge of gravity and physics and math to get them back to safety before it’s too late.

            Story wise, Gravity is just your everyday survival films, with it also grasping the horror genre with the dead of space being the one and only antagonist. Sandra Bullock’s character is alone for most of the movie, which cements the fear in her as she slowly loses her precious oxygen. Her change in emotions is excellent, and they alone really sell the film.

Gravity has what I believe to be the best special effects to date in a movie. Most movies don’t truly grasp how to incorporate there effects into the movie, with most just saying “Hey let’s just put in a lot of big explosions and people like that so more explosions” But this movie uses intense effects to capture outer space flawlessly. Sometimes when I was watching this movie, I would have to remind myself that it was just that, a movie.  

            Gravity has earned itself a PG-13 rating and rightfully deserves it. It does have its fair share of language, with it dropping the f bomb once, but other than that, it should be the same amount of language found in any other film. There is one scene that has a jump scare in it, with the scene itself being fairly graphic, but it doesn’t show anything off the charts. The rating mostly comes from the intense environment that the characters are trapped in, with you not knowing for the entire film if they are going to make it or not. I would suggest you should be at least 10 if you want to see this movie, and even then you need to have a parent tag along, but I’m 100% sure it will not be a waste of money for them.

With its amazing script and acting combined with the immense and amazing special effects, I cant give this movie enough praise. It takes the genre of horror/survival and pushes it to the max with its staggering effects of space and its riveting plot. I highly suggest seeing this movie as soon as you can. I promise you will not be disappointed.

What is Reddit

Reddit.  What do you think of when you hear the word Reddit? Some may think of a worldwide multimedia source for all of your needs in billions of categories, or you may think of a dark evil place, that has called the “cesspool of the internet”. But whatever your view may be, Reddit has become almost synonymous with the internet, with the site drawing in millions every day.

                Reddit was started by 2 college students in 2005. The site started as a simple open funded project which tried to take news and types of media and bundle them all in one website. It stayed fairly unknown until about mid July, where it had a massive popularity spike. If you have never been on reddit before, let me explain what you can do. With reddit you can make an account and start browsing through its many pages, with it having a page (Known as sub reddits) for almost anything you can think of, from funny pictures to an entire page about the oak tree. You can subscribe to the page to get its top posts on your wall, and you can post things to any page you would like as well. If people enjoy your post they may give it an up-vote, and if you get enough, you may be able to get featured on the front page of the site. With this comes bragging rights and also earns you karma, which is like a score system (Higher karma means overall better posts). It since has grown exponentially from its original design, with the website making over 15 million dollars a year, and is estimated to be worth 3.5 billion dollars. The site has started many things that are now in our pop culture, and has hosted many of fundraising events, with one making over $200,000 to donate for relief work in Haiti after the earthquake.

                It has also become a hit with celebrities, with many popular actors hosting their very own AMA. AMA stands for ask my anything and it gives the chance to let everyday people post a question to the actor, and if they’re lucky, they very well might have it answered. A few examples of celebs that have hosted their own include Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Gates, Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul, PSY, Bear Grylls, and even our own president, Barrack Obama.

                While reddit does have its positives, it also has its dark side. It has grown a reputation of being a “cesspool” for the pedophiles, creepers, criminals, and other bad types of people. When I said that there was a page for anything, I wasn’t lying. Many people just hear of the bad things that happen time to time, but with millions of people coming in and out of the site daily, it’s expected. Reddit has cleaned up quite a lot from a few years ago, and has greatly improved its security measures. But even with them in place, I wouldn’t recommend visiting the site unless you are 14+.

                I hope that I did a fairly good job explaining what reddit is, and I highly suggest that you make an account on the site and explore the many pages it has to offer.