Month: February 2017

John Wick Chapter 2: A review

Posted on by commbro

John Wick: Chapter 2

Runtime: 2 hours 2 minutes
Budget: Estimated to be $40 million

The ultimate love story of all time gets a second installment. It’s the perfect Valentine’s date movie. How far does a man go for love?

They even made this lovely poster to go with it!

They even made this lovely poster to go with it!

Just kidding, take your date unless they enjoy great action and a bloody mess.

The cinematography and choreography was excellent. The much maligned quick cuts and shaky cam are almost entirely absent. And somehow they did it with a mere $40 million budget. Less than that of the fan-favorite Deadpool and only $10 million more than La La Land. A testament to the great camera-work is a scene where they fought in the dark with flashlights and smoke. Instead of the chaos and confusion one would expect, I could still follow what was going on quite clearly.

I’m sure some of you, me included, feared that this might be in the same vein as Taken 4: Taken Again: Please Make It Stop. That was clearly not the case. Many of the action scenes were unique and give viewers much to be excited about. Some notable ones are the grappling scene, the walking scene, and the mirror room scenes.

The crew really invested into small details that bring the movie together. The most obvious most obvious—a carry over from the first film—being a realistic ammo count and reloading. However, the attention to detail goes far beyond that. See how much you notice when you watch. Notice I said when. You should really just stop reading and go right now.

As much as they cared about details, they had the continued restraint to skimp when necessary. Chapter 2 feeds you a bit more of the world by showing instead of telling. While scant, it certainly builds on their mysterious crime organization and leaves you wanting more.

While an action movie at its core, it’s not devoid of deeper ideas. There is a huge overarching them of cascading consequences that I really enjoyed. There’s more, but I prefer you watch it rather than just take my word.

While not as simplistic and small scale as the first John Wick, Chapter 2 delivers on what we’ve come to expect from this franchise. The story remains basic, but the execution is top notch.

CommBro Breaker

The first dog is cuter.

(Right: Deserves Oscar for Best Lead Actor. Left: Deserves merely competitive compensation for a supporting actor)

(Left: Deserved Oscar for Best Lead Actor. Right: Deserved merely competitive compensation for a supporting actor)

SCigning Day 2017

Posted on by commbro

Another National Signing Day has come and gone and USC has closed another highly ranked class. That’s something Trojan fans have come to expect. Don’t let that get in the way of fully appreciating what happened here.

There are a great many number of things to appreciate besides that too. Like…

…being able to correctly type out SCigning. That’s more difficult than it sounds. It just looks weird, which it throws me off because I spell by sight. Nothing could prevent me from giving up that PAT of puns though. College PAT, not the NFL 33-yarders. Easy peasy.

There was also the emergence of Kobe Buffalomeat—a name that sounds like it came out of a Key and Peele skit. I spent some time with my friend trying to verify if that name was real and, let me tell you, it was about as difficult as spelling SCigning.

While scrolling down the Twitter feed of Illinois State Football, we also found Rick Rollerson. That certainly didn’t help confirm anything due to its similarity to the overused Rick Roll.

On to the things you actually care about…

You already know about the spring enrollees (based on consensus of 247, Scout, and Rivals rankings)

3-star OT Andrew Voorhees
4-star QB Jack Sears
3-star LB Tayler Katoa
2-star Longsnapper Damon Johnson
4-star DT Marlon Tuipulotu

Always great to get people on campus early. They get to start learning right away and, perhaps, make an instant impact. Someone like Damon Johnson better learn fast because he will probably have to start right away no matter where he’s at developmentally whereas Sears will most likely not be playing unless some major incidents happen.

The rest I’ll just link to because they do a better job of including all necessary information

http://www.scout.com/college/usc/2017-football-commits

The headliners of the class were the following:

5-star RB Stephen Carr
4-star OLB Levi Jones
5-star OT Austin Jackson
5-star DT Jay Tufele
5-star WR Joseph Lewis
4-star ATH Greg Johnson

The latter five made their big announcements on signing day last week.

Despite getting great recruits, the class is solid because of balanced numbers on offense and defense and filling areas of need. As if that wasn’t good enough, the coaching staff managed to get an advance scholarship to 4-star OT Jalen McKenzie.

CommBro Breaker

Some star ratings may be on the lower side, but due to need, they are much more valuable than their rating would imply. As a result, I’m going to attempt a few modifications to better illustrate the immediate impact. I mean, you can’t really predict the trajectory and success of a high schooler 3 to 7 years later with some stinking stars anyway.

But let’s not stop there. Since this is City of Angles, we don’t settle for no star ratings ’round here, ya hear? Instead, we have angle ratings. By my horrific math count, there are 10 angles per star, so every star is worth 10.

35-angle OT Andrew Voorhees
35-angle WR Joseph Lewis
40-angle DT Brandon Pili
40-angle ATH Greg Johnson
45-angle DT Marlon Tuipulotu
45-angle OT Jalen McKenzie
45-angle OT Alijah Vera-Tucker
50-angle DT Jay Tufele
60-angle LS Damon Johnson

Okay, I’m done trolling. This is actually really difficult. Show some appreciate to Scout, Rivals, and 247 for their solid work. See you next time.