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  Man, this summer season has brought out some big guns when it comes to blockbusters. Between the Marvel entries (Thor/Captain America) and Harry Potter 7 (right?) there has been everything under the sun offered at your local cinema, with maybe the exception of a new Star Trek/Star Wars movie. But with all these summer blockbusters and remakes there was one that ALMOST went undetected in my radar. The movie in question is the reboot/retelling of the Planet of the Apes franchise, dubbed Rise of the Planet of the Apes (ow... my long titles). Initially, I had brushed this movie off due to the fact that: the Tim Burton reboot was pretty horrible (the makeup was good, I guess?) and the franchise had not aged well after it's fourth movie (there was what... 6 of these?). So naturally I was planning to skip the movie until I realized who was being used as the human model for Cesar the ape.

"Hobbittseessssss..."

  For the uninitiated (and how the hell did you find this website then?) the man in question here is Andy Serkis, who voiced/played Gollum in the Lord of the Rings (and upcoming Hobbit movies) trilogy and was also the actor who portrayed the titular character in Peter Jackson's King Kong. The man is a motion capture acting genius and this movie will be the sole reason the Oscars will probably have to finally make a category for this type of work. To be perfectly blunt, Andy Serkis MAKES this movie and his character of Cesar is easily one of the crowning achievements in the medium. But what about the movie itself? One man can make a movie sure, but can he carry the whole thing on his shoulders? Time to find out... (SPOILERS GALORE AHEAD!!!)

5 reasons to be psyched for Star Wars: The Old Republic

  Phew, it's been a long time since I relaxed in the Beach House! I have decided to drop the whole "weekly One Piece chapter reviews" since it was entirely too time consuming (and there are far better reviewers out there) and decided to write about stuff that I feel a bit more passionate for. While wrestling is certainly within that category ("I love me some wrasslin'"), those needs will be taken care of in my wrestling column section in the soon to be operational www.wrestlingbully.com. When that site is up you can double dip on some more SHR goodness, but for now this will do. Today, however, I want to speak to my geekiest of fans; I'm talking to you, my Star Wars peeps.

Exactly how I imagined the Second Coming of Christ.

Future Endeavors

   So after a few weeks to ponder on what to do with this site, I decided to keep it but with the intention of it being more of a practice ground for "other" things more than anything. Basically more of a personal blog than a review/list/column site. I'll be doing columns for a wrestling website here soon (we're still building the site) and that will probably take my time; watching over 4 hours of programming to write a column is serious business. So until next time, ya'll have fun and I'll post my new "home" soon™.

With that being said.
 

The REAL Champ is here!

Playing Catch Up

  The last time I reviewed One Piece was before the disaster in Japan occured. Since then the series has had two official character deaths and we're currently a few episodes away from the "timeskip." Since it's a LOT to stomach in just one review I decided to leave it for a longer column so I can play catch up and review the "War of the Best Arc" in it's entirety instead of a episode by episode dissection (which opens my time for OTHER types of columns). With that being said, I leave you with the new opening for One Piece. Enjoy.

Wrestlemania 27 Review!

Finally, StrawHatRican HAS come back to the Beach House!

And I met a certain political figure that inspired me during said exile...

Intermission

^^

SHR's semi-weekly columns will be back after a short vacation.

In the meantime.

May or may not be SHR in cat form.

The Punch That Rocks the HQ

  Saturdays are slowly becoming my "How is Toei going to make Whitebeard more badass?" day. Granted last week we had the Ace dying (and Luffy losing it) episode but at least this week the emotion takes a backseat to give us a good old fashioned slugfest between two powerful entities. That being said, time for the review of One Piece - Episode 484.

"Pick up the soap, bub."

Zach Galifianakis, why?

  Zach Galifianakis, a name that makes me glad computers have a copy/paste option. I couldn't imagine being that guy and writing my name for school reports and exams day in and day out. Ouch. I feel for the guy, I really do. Especially considering that I actually think he has golden moments of comedy, that he doesn't seem to be capitalizing on. Take for instance a movie I had the pleasure (I'm being nice, it's my nature) of watching at the budget theater here in town: Due Date. So yes, we're doing this, SHR's Review of (God help me) Due Date.

You know... there really aren't ANY warning signs.

The Top 10 Saddest Moments in One Piece History.

  Attention none One Piece readers/viewers: this list is SPOILER heavy and full of sadness. While usually I wouldn't consider myself a person that gets out of his way to feel sad, I AM capable of feeling emotions, considering my overly optimistic and forgiving personality, this is quite a feat. That being said; One Piece is one of the few shonen manga that is packed with emotion. Be it happiness, sadness, despair, or rage; the world that Eichiiro Oda has crafted is anything but two dimensional. The art style and the usually upbeat tone of the series can fool most to drop their guard and go with the flow. I know that because I was one of those people. I figured it was going to maybe have a semi serious moment here and there. But nothing could've prepared me for the amount of raw emotional scenes and moments this show, aimed at teenage (and pre-teen) boys in Japan mind you, was going to throw at me.

Ready for the New World!

Dear Netflix, I Love You. PSYCH!!!

  I love the internet. I guess I should say specifically which part of the "series of tubes" I'm talking about, but I think I just love all the possibilities that the internet provides us. When I was a wee-bit Rican back in the Island I used to think MSN Messenger and MSN Chat Rooms were the best thing ever. Then I came upon multimedia heavy sites like IGN.com and the such. It wasn't until much later that my love for the internet blossomed again with MySpace and YouTube... the idea of user content and pages at my fingertips was a great rush, but then Facebook came and united all the formulas in one simple (yet complicated) package. A couple of years ago I heard of a service for movies named Netflix. Get some discs in the mail, watch 'em, send them back, get some more, all for a small monthly fee. This was Heaven for a movie fanatic like me, so how do you improve that formula? Two words: streamed content. At first it was only via their website (makes sense) on your PC but they have expanded to PS3/Xbox 360/Wii and a plethora of other devices to get their service out.

Making going to the movies an even bigger waste of money...