This was a wild decade wasn't it? But while the world was exploding, so was the entertainment business. It was a decade of triumphs, and also a decade of a lot of crappy stuff. But let's keep on the sunny side here and stick to the good stuff. Here are my top5 movies, albums, and games of the 2000's.

Movies

5. The Dark Knight

4. Public Enemies

(I know a lot of people didn't like this movie, but I loved it)

3. The Lord of The Rings Trilogy

(I find it hard to seperate the 3 movies)

2. I'm Not There

1. O' Brother Where Art Thou?

Albums

5. Room On Fire by The Strokes

4. Consolers of the Lonely by The Raconteurs

3. Sky Blue Sky by Wilco

2. Stay Positive by The Hold Steady

1. American Idiot by Green Day

Video Games

5. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

4. Jak II

3. Batman: Arkham Asylum

2. Jak 3

1. Battlefield: Bad Company

I hope you enjoyed my lists, please leave comments to expressyour opinions.

Happy New Year and Decade!

Yours Truly,

Blaze

Sherlock Holmes pumps some iron and becomes an outlaw... it was brilliant.

Out of all the character's that have ever been created, Sherlock Holmes is one of the last that you would expect to be a clever snob who plays by his own rules and beats criminals to a pulp with his bare hands (and sometimes nightsticks). When I first heard about Holmes becoming a Jack Sparrow-like character being portrayed by Iron Man himself, I was a little scepticle. But I was interested enough to see it. And I'm extremely happy that I did. Sherlock Holmeswas easily one of the best movies I've seen this year. Don't get fooled by the Indiana Jones-esque approach, Holmesis actually a better character now than he was before. I might take some heat for this, but Robert Downey Jr. was every bit better than Basil Rathbone as Holmes. He was the perfect choice to play this new take on the character. The movie was really original actually. It used a lot of things that other movies don't use. For example, whenever Holmes is about to give a fatal attack, it goes through his thought process and shows what he's thinking in slow motion. A few seconds later, he does exactly what he pictured. A couple of things in the movie were a little bizarre, but besides that, it did everything right. Jude Law was great as Watson, making him more of a combat assistant to Holmes than intellectual support. The setting really does make you think of 19th century London. It captures a lot of aspects of the time period. Overall, Sherlock Holmes was a thrill ride that no one should miss.

8.5/10

I love Christmas. And one of my favorite parts of the holiday season is watching Christmas specials. Whether it's a 30 minute cartoon or a full length movie, Christmas specials are the heart and soul of the holiday season (Not really, I just had to make it catchy.) ;)

10. A Colbert Christmas

9. Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

8. A Wish For Wings That Work

7. It's A Wonderful Life

6. Olive The Other Reindeer

5. Elf

4. A Christmas Carol

3. A Charlie Brown Christmas

2. How The Grinch Stole Christmas

1. A Christmas Story

Hope you enjoyed the list! And I hope that you'll watch the ones that you haven't seen within the next two days.

Merry Christmas from Blaze

Avatar is a visual masterpiece, but a rather sloppily thrown together story slows it down a bit.

James Cameron is one of those guys that always makes completely different movies, while doing the exact same things in each movie. The Terminator, Titanic, and Aliens have plots that are almost the exact opposites of each other, but they all mainly relied on special effects. There wasn't a whole lot of story put into the three movies I just mentioned, but the visuals were great. And Avatar isn't a whole lot different. It has some of the most impressive special effects that I've ever seen, it ranks with Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyseey in that category, but the story is constantely changing between different issues, which threw me off a little bit. The movie centers around a marine who's been put in a wheelchair named Jake Sully. The movie is set in the year 2154 so you can't really question the huge scientific upgrades that've been bestowed on the human race. Sully is stationed on Pandora, a jungle planet populated by 8 foot tall smurfs and exotic creatures that tend to resemble birds, dogs, and rhinos. Sully is signed up for the Avatar program, which ironically is led by Sigourney Weaver. This of course is ironic because she was the star of the earlier James Cameron movie, Aliens. The program mixes the DNA of the human subject with the natives of the planet. When in avatar form, Sully is able to use his legs, and so he tends to enjoy it more. But eventually, he gets attached to the people of Pandora, and begins to lead a life among them more a life among the marines. I won't give away any more of the story because, then really important things are revealed. The movie itself is reallyenjoyable. There's a lot of action and suspense, and when theCGI is going on, you can barely tell. I really though that those were actual 8 foot blue people. Granted, the story does kinda jump from one issue to the next, but it didn't bother me that much. But what about the 3D? It was clearly being shown in 3D, but seeing as the movie is 2 hours and 45 minutes, you don't really notice the 3D after awhile. Overall, Avatar is something that anyone could enjoy.

7.5/10

Fantastic Mr. Fox isn't quite as fantastic as you'd think

What happened to claymation? It was popularized by Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run, and then it just sort of vanished. But when it was annouced that there was going to be a claymation based on a Roald Dahl book, I was pretty interested. What came out of that was Fantastic Mr. Fox, a movie that showed us that claymation is still a possibillity in the world of movies. What really lured me this movie was the cast. George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, the list just keeps going. It's actually pretty hard to review this movie, because it wasn't as good as I thought it was going to be, but it certainly wasn't bad. I was expecting the comedy to be a little more clever, and for the plot to make a little more sense. The movie was actually pretty weird. There are about a million needless close ups, and none of the characters were interesting at all. The best character was probably The Rat who was voiced by Willem Dafoe, and he barely did anything. I can't give this movie too much heat seeing as it is a kid's movie, but it's really bizarre. The animation was really impressive and did use "Street Fighting Man" by The Rolling Stones in one scene, which earns you some points in my book. To sum it up, Fantastic Mr. Fox is worth seeing.

6.5/10

60spaure tagged me. Here are 10 facts about me

1. I love big cities

2. My favorite food is bacon cheeseburgers

3. My favoritemusical actis a tie between The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, and Bob Dylan

4. My user icon is Boba Fett wearing a pimp hat 8)

5. My favorite video game series are Jak & Daxter and Metal Gear Solid

6. I'm a member of Amnesty International

7. I hate modern country music and metal

8. I play guitar

9. I'm a writer

10. I love western, mystery, and gangstermovies

Now I tag

kingkilla3
Jak_Napier
JokerFett

So, the world's gonna end. Too bad this movie was made before we all die.

People have been predicting the end of the world from quite some time now. Everybody's been wrong so far and hopefully they always will be. But the apocalypse is gold in Hollywood. Now directors get a chance to show off their flashy special effects in something besides comic book movies. And who better to show off visuals than Roland Emmerick. The same Roland Emmerick thatdirected Stargate... I'll never forgive him for that. So, Emmerick decides to tackle doomsday and make it 2 and a half hours. I'm serious,Lawrence of Arabia felt shorter. The movie centers around John Cusack who for some unexplained reason is the limo driver forsome rich Russian guy. Which is odd, because Cusack's character lives in California. Cusack takes his kids to Yellowstone National Park where their greeted by American soldiers andWoody Harrelson dressedas a hermit... :|. It turns out that Harrelson is a radio broadcasterwho lives in a van out at Yellowstone. He tells Cusack aboutthe 2012 theory and then everything starts falling over and blowing up. Oh, and while this is happening, about4 other plots are going on. There's one abouttheworld leaders (mainly the U.S.)handling this.Actually, Danny Glover plays the president of the United States. Another is about these monks in Tibet. Another about this dude in India, and finally one about Forest Whittaker and some other guy being jazz musicians on a cruise ship. Eventually they all come together, but it takes a while. So how does 2012 hold up? The special effects are pretty impressive but the multiple plots are just nuts and there are quite a few things that don't make any sense. Woody Harrelson, Danny Glover, and Forest Whittaker do the best acting jobs by a long shot. The movie isn't exactly bad, but it's certainly not good.

5/10

Supergroups are a rarity these days aren't they? The closest to them that we've come in the last decade is Audioslave and The Raconteurs. But when I first heard that Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters & Nirvana) Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) and John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin) were coming together as a band my head nearly exploded. I'm a big fan of all 4 of those bands and I like the idea of supergroups. I had to wait about 3 months for the band to release anything and whatcame out of that was the self titled album, Them Crooked Vultures. I was eager to hear Dave Grohl back at the kit (he played drums for Nirvana) and I hadn't heard from Josh Homme or John Paul Jones in a long time. So, as you can imagine, I was pretty dang pumped for this album. The majority of the songs sound more like Queens of the Stone Age than anything, and Dave Grohl doesn't wield the mic that much. But on the 2nd track entitled "Mind Eraser, No Chaser" Grohl gets to sing in the chorus of the song. It's great to hear Homme and Grohl trading vocals. Most of the songs sound pretty much the same, but some kind of drag a little. Near the end it gets kinda repetitive but it's still fun to listen to. Bottom line, if you like Queens of the Stone Age or Foo Fighters this is the album for you. But if you wanna hear John Paul Jones revive the sound Zeppelin, this isn't what you're looking for.

7.5/10

Wolfmother. They're one of rock's last hopes. After releasing they're self-titled debut album in 2005, the band sort of disappeared. People remembered hits like "Woman" and "The Joker and the Thief", but the band themselves weren't doing anything. Turns out that the band had broken up, and frontman Andrew Stockdale was forming a new Wolfmother. The new band then announced their new album, Cosmic Egg. I got the album for my birthday, and decided to write a review of it. I'll give a brief summary to start it off... incredible. I'm dead serious, Cosmic Egg is one of the best new albums I've heard in a long time. They keep the original sound with heavy riffs, crazy solos, and wild vocals, but they experiment more. There's some acoustic guitar thrown in there, and some songs are a little slower. Andrew Stockdale's voice seems more mature than it did on Wolfmother and it's not as wild. But he can still throw out those crazy screams we all know and love. The new band sounds better than the old one, and overall the album itself is better. Cosmic Egg is easily the best album I've heard all year, and possibly the best album of the decade. It's that good.

9/10

Oh, and to those of you who think that Wolfmother is metal, you're wrong. Wolfmother is 80x better than any kind of metal. They're more like Led Zeppelin than anything.

Today's my birthday! And I'm really excited because I got Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier, the new Wolfmother album, and an autographed picture of Stephen Colbert! This is a great birthday :)