Mount Hood

Pokémon GO Takes Over Mobile Gaming

By: Ashton Newton
Entertainment Editor

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Summer 2016 can easily be described in two words: Pokémon GO. The augmented-reality Pokémon hunting game from Niantic was released in early June and quickly took over the world. It became nearly impossible during its peak to go out in public without seeing people playing. Pokémon GO hit 45 million players during its peak in July.

The game uses GPS to place players in an augmented reality where Pokémon spawn and players must walk from point to point to catch them. Players can stop at landmarks, which are denoted as either Pokéstops or Gyms, to get supplies and battle other players. Western has an abundance of these around; walking from one building to another could easily put a player within range of at least one new Pokéstop.

Niantic even made a deal with McDonald’s in Japan for a non-obtrusive corporate sponsorship by making Japanese McDonalds’ Pokéstops. This brought in more business for McDonald’s and more sponsorship revenue for Niantic.

After its release, Pokémon GO quickly shot up both the most downloaded and the top grossing section of the App Store. Even now, Pokémon GO is the third grossing app. The financial success for both Niantic and Nintendo gave them the funding for the anticipated “Detective Pikachu” film that is now in the works at Legendary Pictures.

Pokémon GO is both a social and active game. It forces players to go out and search for Pokémon around cities and parks meeting other Pokémon trainers as they go. The game features three different teams that players can join: Team Mystic, Team Valor, and Team Instinct. The team feature gives users either an instant connection or instant rivalry with other players they meet. As for the active side of the game, Pokémon GO features Pokémon eggs that players can hatch by walking two km,  five km or 10 km. The incentive behind putting in the miles is the chance to hatch a rare Pokémon that may not be found in your region.

The app has players going where they wouldn’t normally go to catch rare Pokémon. A Wyoming teenager climbed down to a river for a better chance of catching a water type Pokémon when she stumbled across a dead body. Luckily now the game has a periodical message telling players not to enter dangerous areas or trespass while playing, as well as messages telling players not to play while driving if their speed is over 20 mph.

In addition to the popularity of Pokémon GO, Pokémon’s popularity in general has skyrocketed since the release. Pokémon merchandise of all kinds can be found in stores everywhere. This includes clothes, backpacks, school supplies, toys and more. The success of the game has provided an opportunity to bring back all of Pokémon’s popularity and, so far, has been successful in doing so.

While Pokémon GO’s popularity is on a slight decline after reaching its peak over summer, Niantic is still actively updating it. The most recent addition to the game is the Buddy System. Players can choose a Pokémon to travel with them, earning candy as they walk, which can then be used to rank the Pokémon up. This gives players a chance to upgrade rare Pokémon without having to endlessly hunt for them.

Over the summer, Pokémon GO meetups became a very popular activity. By using sites like Reddit and Facebook, players found times to meet up and hunt for Pokémon together. The Pokémon GO subreddit is great for any player looking for tips, tricks, strategies, or people in their area to play with. Meetups are still happening often, including meetups here around Western! The most recent was on Sept. 24, so keep your eyes peeled for information on upcoming meetups.
Contact the author at journalentertainment@wou.edu

Blair Witch Review

By: Ashton Newton
Entertainment Editor

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When “The Blair Witch Project” was released in 1999, it was met with good reviews. The film created an entirely new genre of horror with documentary style filmmaking which is still used in today’s film making industry.

The new “Blair Witch” follows the events of the original, as main character Heather Donahue’s brother reenters the forest with three friends to search for his sister after revealing new footage showing her alive 20 years later.

At its core, the film is extremely similar to the original; a group of young adults searching the woods with video cameras are haunted by some unknown entity. In plot, it feels like “The Blair Witch Project” 2.0, with fancier cameras and jump scares.

“Blair Witch” relies heavily on cheap jump scares while the original didn’t have to. The jump scares were both predictable and never used anything truly terrifying. This cheap tactic was overused and had very few successful payoffs.

However, the film shines in its distortion of space-time and isolation horror. Like the original, the group seemed to break free of time and space, going in circles, making five or six days feel like a couple of hours. They were powerless, and that was extremely unnerving and anxiety inducing.

“Blair Witch” is a must see for any fan of the original. Not only is the story directly influenced by it, the folklore behind the Blair Witch, herself, is expanded upon. Story wise, “Blair Witch” succeeds at making the “lost in the woods” trope believable.

While not a terrible movie, “Blair Witch” fails to capture what made the original so memorable. The film is brought down by its predictable jump scares and familiar plot. “Blair Witch” is at its best when the mainstream jumpy horror is replaced with the isolationist horror of the original.

Contact the author at journalentertainment@wou.edu

Denny, don’t plan too much

By: Darien Campo
Staff Writer

Since the day it was released, critics have called Tommy Wiseau’s “The Room” the worst film ever made.

In a nutshell: when Johnny begins to suspect his best friend is sleeping with his future wife, friendships begin to slowly unravel, and the true nature of humanity is revealed in this black comedy cult classic.

“The Citizen Kane of bad movies” is a phrase coined by film professor Ross Morin that gets tossed around frequently. “The Room” has been mocked, parodied, remixed, memed, and outright torn apart by viewers all across the globe. But no matter how much derision it has attracted, on May 27 “The Room” turned 13 years old – and it is still going as strong as ever.

A year and a half ago I had the pleasure to meet Tommy Wiseau himself at a showing of “The Room.” Theatres all across the country still have late-night showings of the film, and crowds pack each and every one of those houses to share the unique “Rocky Horror”-esque experience. Even after all these years Wiseau still tours the world to meet his fans, and there seems to be no signs of slowing down for him.

Though a bit of a showboat, Wiseau is an incredibly pleasant man, and is happy to give attention to each and every fan he meets. His unique accent, peculiar looks, and mysterious background all make the perfect ingredients for a cult celebrity hero. Fans speculate about his movie, they impersonate him, and they even dress like him (I am guilty of this myself) all in an enormous rally around one of the oddest films ever to see the big screen.

“The Room” is, without a doubt, not a well-made movie. The writing is sloppy and inconsistent, the direction is laughable, and the acting is horrifying. For all intents and purposes, “The Room” is a perfect example of how not to make a film.

But there are thousands of bad movies filling dollar bins around the world, so what makes “The Room” different? How can a film considered so widely to be so bad experience so much success?

I think it goes beyond good and bad. “The Room” showed me that a bad movie is more than just lazy writing and sub-par acting. A bad movie is instead a lack of passion – something “The Room” has in spades. Behind the scenes stories, like the ones in Greg Sestero’s tell-all “The Disaster Artist,” reveal just how dedicated Wiseau was to his project. Tommy Wiseau dreamed for nothing more than to direct the greatest film ever made, and he let nothing – not his lack of funding, not his lack of proper crew, not his lack of support, not even his lack of fundamental skill as a filmmaker – stop him from realizing that dream.

“The Room” may not be the best movie ever made, but I would argue that it is the bravest movie ever made. It displays passion, power, and absolute love for the art of filmmaking. Everybody can find some part of themselves inside “The Room.”

Just like Tommy Wiseau himself famously said: “You can laugh, you can cry, you can express yourself, but please don’t hurt each other!”

Contact the author at dcampo13@wou.edu

A Moon Shaped Pool

By: Darien Campo
Staff Writer

Sunday, May 8 finally brought us the release of Radiohead’s long-anticipated ninth studio album “A Moon Shaped Pool.” In only 11 tracks this 25-year-old band shows us that not only can they still write music to rival their greatest works, but they’ve only gotten better at it.

The album is 11 tracks long, a few of which are songs fans have been waiting to hear on a studio release for years. “Identikit” was first played live in 2012, “Burn the Witch” has been teased since 2003, and “True Love Waits” has been a concert-exclusive fan favorite since 1994. These are only three of the fantastic songs brought by Radiohead’s newest release.

This album makes prominent use of the London Contemporary Orchestra under multi-instrumentalist Jonny Greenwood’s composition. In fact, the instrumentation in this album hearkens back to earlier eras of Radiohead’s discography. For the fans who have been concerned the band has moved too far into electronic, looping music, you’ll be happy to hear that AMSP features many songs that make full use of all five band members on their classic instruments. Songs like “Decks Dark” and “Identikit” lovingly combine their old five-piece rock sound with the electronic influence of Radiohead’s later career.

We can compare Radiohead’s albums all day and try to rank which release is the best, but AMSP is above that. “A Moon Shaped Pool” shows us that Radiohead has grown. This album is mature, it is strong, and it is the accumulation of years of experience from five insanely talented musicians. Though the album doesn’t drive you to dance, it sure does beckon you with a wink and a nod, asking you to come out and join it on the floor. The album moves you physically, as well as emotionally. Every member of Radiohead gets their chance to show off what they’ve learned over 25 years and nine albums, and together they flex and flaunt their musical prowess. “A Moon Shaped Pool” is emotionally draining, sonically astounding, physically grooving, and compositionally spectacular.

Once again, Radiohead has shown the world that they are some of the most powerful musicians alive today. You don’t even have to like them to appreciate the artistry of this album. “A Moon Shaped Pool” will be a monolithic feat in the history modern rock, trust me when I say you do not want to miss this one.

Contact the author at dcampo13@wou.edu

THE EDITOR SMILES WARMLY TOWARD

Unique YouTube channels that you oughta subscribe to.

“Grand Illusions” is the YouTube channel of Tim the Toyman, an old British fella with a MASSIVE collection of toys and novelty items. His videos range from about 45 seconds to 20 minutes (!), and center around a single item or a category of them, be it playing cards, unconventional lighters, strange bottles, toys that look like fish, or one of his most recent: brushes! There are all kinds of toy collection channels on YouTube, but Tim is one of the only people that never talks about the value of the toys or the brand or anything like that. He is just a funny old man with a deep, abiding appreciation for toy design, mechanisms, and how they function; and “Grand Illusions” is his way of sharing his life’s work with the world. His charming persona, dry wit, and clear passion for these “funny little contraptions” keeps me coming back. Quite extraordinary.

She said … I don’t know where I discovered the channel of “Shopdogsam,” but I’m glad I did. He’s a hippie grandpa with a thick Tennessee accent, a love of engines and Hostess cupcakes, a stuffed parrot, long white hair, and a longer white beard, and most of his videos are stream-of-consciousness monologues about … well, it’s kind of hard to say. But he’s oddly fascinating, talking into the void of YouTube-land as if it were an old, trusted friend, as he rolls an industrial spool around or eats ice cream and cupcakes with chopsticks. He’s an oddball for sure, but again … it’s all super compelling. And that’s all I’m gonna say about that.

Theodore Cottingham recently deleted his YouTube channel, but he still has a large collection of material on Vimeo. He runs a coffee shop in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and has released just a shade fewer than five hundred videos of … I guess I’ll let ol’ Theo himself explain: “I am Christ, Christing the Christ, teaching all who will to become it also, through my words. These recordings are me speaking the first person words of God I am for you to learn to do also, where you record it, study it, learn from it, surrendering daily to the process of The New Covenant so you experience the transformation of Christ to become it in your two shoes becoming a new creation person of leadership in your country.” And if that doesn’t at least intrigue you, you are a lost cause.

“And we back:” Chance the Rapper’s latest shines

By: Declan Hertel
Entertainment Editor

I gotta cut right to the chase: Chance the Rapper’s third and most recent release, “Coloring Book” (also known to fans as “Chance 3”), is really good. Like, really, Screen Shot 2016-05-23 at 7.42.36 PMreally good.

I heard his 2013 mixtape, “Acid Rap,” for the first time about two years after it came out, and I really dug it, but I didn’t really start to pay attention to Chance until his just-about-perfect verse on Kanye West’s “Ultralight Beam,” the opening track on “The Life of Pablo” (review at wou.edu/westernjournal).

His verse caught my attention like no other, and I soon after went back to “Acid Rap.” Before I had dug it, but now I felt like I got it. Chance is different, in a way he states perfectly in the first verse of CB’s “Blessings:” “I don’t make songs for free, I make ‘em for freedom / don’t believe in kings, believe in the kingdom.”

I don’t even know where to begin talking about this mixtape, so the beginning will work: I don’t want to proclaim a trend too early—two is hardly a pattern—but with “The Life of Pablo” and “Coloring Book,” hip-hop and gospel music have found themselves very, very happy together. But unlike Yeezy’s latest, which uses its gospel influence as a plea to God to help a troubled sinner, “Coloring Book” uses gospel to proclaim and share the glory with all who hear it.

He is a man blessed with unbelievable success, including getting to work closely with Kanye West, the man who inspired him to become a rapper, and who provides the hook on “All We Got,” the first cut on “Coloring Book.” The record has all kinds of high profile features (Lil Wayne, Justin Bieber, and T-Pain, to name a few), with several songs underscored with triumphant horns and choirs. Throughout the 14 tracks, Chance is not only celebrating his success, but is eternally grateful for it, and wants to share it.

What makes Chance and “Coloring Book” great is his ultimately positive message. He’s not glamorizing a destructive lifestyle or constantly firing off shots at other artists: his music is all about making the best of everything, counting your blessings, and always being humble and grateful. From touching laments about growing apart like “Same Drugs” to honestly talking about how hard it is to find success in “All We Got,” Chance ultimately lays out a message that says if you stay strong and determined you can accomplish what you want and get through what’s got you down. Even as he raps about his problems, there’s nothing underneath but love and a forward looking attitude.

Unfortunately, it seems that “Coloring Book” has been removed from DatPiff.com, where it was originally released as a free download. But if you’ve got Apple Music you can listen to it there, and since he released it for free, if you want to torrent it or just listen on YouTube, you ought to do that guilt free.

Contact the author at dhertel11@wou.edu or on Twitter @JournalFunTimes

Disney announces nine new live action classic movies

By: Ashton Newton

Disney is a smart studio and they generally get things very right. They have Marvel and Lucasfilm under their belt, which have been getting huge amounts of praise and attention, but following the success of “The Jungle Book,” Disney has announced that they are going back to some of their classics.

Disney has announced live-action versions of nine classic tales, and while no official dates have been tied to the films, Disney says the earliest release would be July 2017.

First on Disney’s list is a live-action movie based off of Cruella Deville, simply titled “Cruella” with Emma Stone set to star.

Angelina Jolie is reprising her role as Maleficent in a sequel and Jon Favreau will be returning to direct “The Jungle Book 2.” A “Jungle Book” sequel may get dicey though, with Andy Serkis and Warner Bros. planning a darker version of the film to release next year.

Director Tim Burton is making his return to Disney with a new “Dumbo” film with “Transformers” writer Ehren Kruger penning the script.

Reese Witherspoon will be starring as Tinkerbell in a Tink-centered film, written by “Finding Dory” writer Victoria Strouse.

“A Wrinkle in Time” and “The Nutcracker” films are also being made.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson will star in “Jungle Cruise,” a film based off of the popular Disneyland ride. “Pirates of the Caribbean” also started off as a Disneyland ride, which inspired the film series.

Emily Blunt is going take on the iconic role of Mary Poppins for a sequel to the 1964 classic.

This lineup of movies is on top of the huge lineup of Marvel films on the way, including “Captain America: Civil War,” which released May 6, and the six “Star Wars” films Disney hopes to release by 2020.

Lastly, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” is in development, with Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, and Keira Knightly all returning. The film is set to release May 2017.

It’s safe to say that Disney knows that they’re doing and have a long-term plan for their films, with both classics and fresh content.

Contact the author at anewton15@wou.edu