Mini Review - The Avengers vs The Dark Knight Rises

So the two big movies this summer were Comic Book based movies, which is a genre of movie that isn't exactly showing signs of slowing down in either volume of content or volume of money being made.  Not only are they the two biggest movies of the summer, but they also have some of the top opening weekends of all time, with that title held by The Avengers.

Obviously, I saw them both, and was really looking forward to both.  Admittedly, I'm a Marvel fanboy, and have never been very attached to DC franchises, but Christopher Nolan's treatment of Batman was so very refreshing and excellently executed.

The Avengers was an impressive culmination of at least 5 years of work by Marvel producers, tying in the characters from their marquee movies, taking away the need of an original story in it's climactic group movie.  For characters like Thor, Iron-Man and Captain America to have been given their solo movie treatments with different directors and writers and still have them all mesh together seamlessly in the ensemble movie was a marvel (sorry) of editorial oversight by the people in charge.   Even the Hulk, with the two commercially and technically dubious solo movies finally was done justice.  Immediately after having seen The Avengers, I was ready and wanting to immediately sit through a second showing.  Joss Whedon has again proven that he is the master of giving fans what they want to see, and choreographing perfectly the dynamics of groups that don't necessarily believe in the same moral views.  I truly hope that this buys Whedon some damn collateral the next time he takes a show to TV, if he ever bothers with an outlet that has spurned him so often.

I think the most impressive piece was that Whedon was able to make me care about (IMO) second stringers Hawkeye and Black Widow.   I think Jeremy Renner was very good in his role, and even Scarlett Johansson was passable as Black Widow.

I did end up seeing The Avengers a couple time in theatres, which is the first time I've paid to see a movie multiple times in a theatre since The Matrix (4 times in the theatre when it was released) which I think demonstrates how much fun and how well this movie was done.

The Dark Knight Rises is also the culmination of 7 years of work, although this time it was one director's impressive vision and body of work.   What Nolan has done with Batman will make it very difficult for any director to follow without completely changing the dark feel of Batman.  I sincerely hope this does not meana  return to the neon foolishness of Joel Schumacher in the late 90s.  I would guess that Dark Knight Rises was critically acclaimed more than The Avengers, based on it being more serious in it's writing and style.

Upon finishing The Dark Knight Rises, I simply felt... nothing.  There was no excitement, there was no talking with my wife about scenes in the car on the way home and there was no talking about it at the next day.  I enjoyed the movie, overall it was pretty much what I expected to see, and maybe that's the difference.  The Avengers gave me what I wanted to see.   Some might consider that pandering to the fans, but I'm sorry, I'm paying money to see a movie, and sometimes I want to see things for MY enjoyment, not for the director's.

The Dark Knight also had more annoyances for me.  For one, Banes voice was annoying at best, and way too difficult to hear.  It absolutely broke my immersion in the movie.  Everytime he spoke, he sounded like it was doing a bad Patrick Stewart impersonation through a drive thru speakerbox.  A very rare gaffe by Nolan, who's villains up to this point were very well done and easy to accept.  Even Anne Hathaway did well, both in her Selena Kyle and Catwoman roles.

I felt the ending was unnecessarily direct.   Without going into spoilers, I would have appreciated either a darker or more questionable ending than was provided, and it would have been more fitting to Nolan's handling of the franchise.  Too many things were wrapped up that didn't need to be overtly hammered over our heads.

Now Nolan is involved at some level with the Man of Steel movie, which is a redo of Superman, and rumours are that Nolan will be overseeing the DC major franchises for a Justice League ensemble movie in 2018 or something.  I'll reserve judgment on this until I see how the Man of Steel is pulled off, but I'm not seeing a dark gritty Justice League doing as well as the lighthearted, exciting, over the top action of the Avengers which holds true to the source comic books.  Yes, Batman works as gritty realism.  Superman, Wonder Woman... not so much, but Nolan has the collateral with me for me to give it a chance at least.

There, again, is the difference.   I'm willing to give Christopher Nolan a shot with involvement with Superman based on his body of work.   I was absolutely unwilling to accept ANYONE by Joss Whedon a chance with The Avengers 2, which has since been confirmed as belonging to Whedon.

So for me, The Avengers was by far the better movie, is recommended by me for anyone whether or not you enjoy comics, whereas The Dark Knight was a worthwhile end to a strong trilogy.

Review - HTC One S

It became time to finally start looking at cellphone upgrades this summer, and this time around, I was going to go for a little more high end than I normally do for my cellphones.  Chasing the top performing phones is an ultimately losing proposition because you'll only be the top dog for a matter of weeks before something bigger, faster and 'better' is released.

My shopping and investigation led me to the HTC One S and the Galaxy Nexus, and it was a very difficult decision, and one that I have had twinges of regret once in a while.  I'll get to that a little later.  I went with the HTC One S because it was brand new, and a top performing phone.   I think it's sleek, very well made, and absolutely top notch.

Build Quality
The phone itself is surprisingly thin and has a very solid feel to it.  I would say it feels almost as sturdy as my older HTC Legend, which was made from a solid body of aluminum.  The finish on the case looks very nice, it's not simply a brushed metal finish, and is a metallic matte grey colour.  On the top of the back of the phone is the camera, with a blue accent ring around the lens.  The camera lens does protrude a bit from the body of the phone, but my simple case is thicker than that protrusion.   The volume rocker is on the right side of the phone, and the power button is on the top of the phone along with the headphone jack.  The micro USB is on the left side.

Some with smaller hands may find the power button on the top as being hard to reach, but I happen to prefer that location to my wife's Galaxy Note which has the power button on the right side, which I find awkward to use.  That's a matter of preference I'm sure, but my last 3 phones have been HTC, and I'm used to it;s location along the top.

On the front of the phone is a very smart looking black border on the screen that extends down the sides of the phone.  This gives the illusion of the phone being even thinner from the side, and makes for a very nice feeling on the fingers as the screen feels truly edge-to-edge with no bevel at all.  There are 3 capacitive touch buttons on the bottom (Back, Home and Recent Apps) and the front facing camera is on the top right of the phone, and the speakers are actually tiny holes drilled right into the solid body of the phone, again lending to it's solid build and design esthetic.  Hidden in one of those tiny holes is a single LED which is the notification LED.  A simple design choice that speaks to the thought that went into this phone.

The only feeling of bad design is the cover that goes on the back of the phone around the camera, which is where the SIM goes.  There is a bit of squeak, and hollowness to it which is disappointing.  Aside from that, the phone feels absolutely great in the hand, albeit a little slick to hold on to, which was  the driving factor in me getting a case for the phone.

Audio
The new HTC phones comes with 'Beats Audio', but to be 100% honest, I'm not entirely clear on what that is, aside from an equalizer.  My phone didn't come with headphones which is a weird decision by either the carrier or the maker when you're touting something like Beats Audio.   With that being said, the audio quality is good when listening to music, but truth be told I sometimes play music with the Beats Audio option enabled, and sometimes disabled.  As far as the in call quality is concerned, it is very good, and the speaker phone works well too.

Camera
To say that the rear facing camera is fast is an understatement.  The time between me pressing the camera app icon and the camera launching and being ready to take a photo is barely measurable.  There are also realtime camera filters, and the ability to hold the button down on the screen and take several photos per second which works very well for sports photos.  The neatest trick though is the ability to take photos while recording video without interruption.  I'm not much of a picture taker, but this camera is the best I have seen on any mobile device.

Speed
This is one of the few times where you'll get technical stats from this review (If you want specs, you can them all over the internet, this review is about user experience).   This phone has a dual core 1.5GHz processor which makes for an amazingly quick phone.  Are there faster phones out there?  Of course there are, but this phone is far from a slouch.  I'll be getting a lot of miles out of this phone based on it's speed and build quality.

Software
Here's where HTC either wins people over, or loses them completely.   The phone comes with the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android modified by what is called HTC Sense.  Sometimes it's minor design changes, and other times it's more major application integration and functionality.  While I love the pure Android experience, I really do like what HTC has done with this new version of Sense.  It's far less obtrusive and very sharp visually, and for me was a major selling feature for the phone.

Now, the software is where those moments of regret have come in with my choice of phones.  When I bought the phone, JellyBean had not yet been offficially unveiled, and I figured it would be a very minor release without a lot of updates, given how major ICS was.  JellyBean was announced and unveiled about 3 or 4 weeks and the speed upgrades from 'Project Butter' and Google Now were far and above what I was expecting to see.  It was announced that the Galaxy Nexus and the Xoom (which I am using to write this review) were going to be the first devices to get this operating system upgrade.  I have an irrational need to have the most up to date systems for my phones and tablets, and I knew it would eventually mean having to root my HTC One S, and installed a custom system with JB.   However, I have been using CyanogenMod 10 which is their JellyBean release, and while I am very happy with the system, I do miss some of the HTC Sense features.  When HTC gets around to upgrading my phone to JellyBean themselves, I can honestly see myself going back to their system, which I think speaks to how well it works.

Overall Impressions
As you might expect, I am very very pleased by this phone.  At the time it was released it was the top performance phone in North America.  It's bigger brother, the HTC One X, has a higher screen resolution but was lacking the quad core processor of it's international version.  Higher screen density with the same processor means it is slower.  I've had this phone for almost 2 full months now, and looking at the current phone market, there isn't a phone that I would trade this one for, and that includes the massively popular Samsung Galaxy S3.

Editorial
Since I have already mentioned the Galaxy S3, I simply do NOT understand the incredible appeal of the Samsung Galaxy line of phones.   I find their physical design very underwhelming, and the physical Home button baffles me.  Touch Wiz (which is Samsung's Android modifications akin to HTC Sense) really seems to me to lack a strong design aesthetic.   At the same time that I bought my HTC One S, my wife bought a Samsung Galaxy Note, and while it's a great phone, and she's very very pleased with it, she does miss HTC Sense. I think HTC pushes the design envelope more, and I don't see the same from Samsung.  HTC has also acknowledged that people who by there phones want to root and unlock them, and HTC has made the process VERY easy in direct response to their community.  I think the fact that HTC launched their high end phones in the forthcoming shadow of the unstoppable GS3 launch may have hurt them.  HTC has had a difficult year financially, and I'm disappointed that their hard work isn't paying off as much for them.  I do want my next phone to be an HTC, and I just hope there is still room in the market for them in 2 years.

Now, to HTC, I will simply say, get that Jelly Bean release done quickly.