– Harry Potter and the Sixth Movie is decent. It’s not in the league of Star Trek or Up for summer quality, but it’s entertaining and well-made on all levels, which has been a fucking rarity in the land of the summer blockbuster this year. You have to really admire how the movies manage to take everything of quality out of the increasingly mediocre progression of books and ignore all the extra flotsam. (For example, Dobby has not shown up once since the second movie, which just goes to show you that the producers understand that Dobby is horrible in all ways.) This time around, Emma Watson really steps up her acting a notch, and Tom Felton makes Draco compelling and sad, which the book never really managed to do.
– Also finally got around to seeing Adventureland and was terribly impressed by it. It turns out Kristen Stewart can actually act when she is not in a shitty movie about sparkle vampires, and Ryan Reynolds’ turn as the park handyman/fading rocker is magnetic in the sort of way that Brad Pitt was in Thelma and Louise. And Jesse Eisenberg is like Michael Cera if Michael Cera wasn’t sometimes horribly annoying in a sort of “I need to punch you in the face” way.
– After a couple of marathon sessions I can safely say that Small World is definitely my frontrunner for “best board game of the year.” It’s quick (about an hour per session when people know the rules), strategic without being boring, has that random element that makes games interesting without being overly luck-based, and best of all it’s the sort of game that’s inherently funny. “A-ha! The Bivouacking Sorcerers strike with great vengeance upon your Dragon Master Halflings!”
– Tales From Monkey Island Chapter One: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal is the first Telltale games adventure “episode” ever that I felt really lived up to the promise of the point-and-click-and-grab-things genre. Most of their previous offerings have been marked by puzzles that fell somewhere in between “unintuitive” and “nonsensical.” But Tales‘ puzzles make sense; they’re not easy, but they’re not so obtuse as to ruin the fun of the story. (Which is fun, incidentally; the story is so far on par with the best Monkey Island games.)
– Wipeout Couples was actually even more enjoyable than regular Wipeout, which is one of the great “sit back and have a beer” teevee shows. Seeing people root for their spouses on the obstacle course (and cheer, and complain) makes it even more fun. Whodathunk?
– The Magic: The Gathering 2010 base set is just shitloads of fun. People complaining about the rules changes need to get slapped for a number of reasons. The base set has knights and dragons and genies and goblins and everything that should be in a Magic base set: the traditional archetypes and things that are awesome about Generic Fantasy Literature ™. And the new spells and cards are flavourful and well-designed.
MEH
– I know I’m going to get pilloried for this, but: Wednesday Comics. The strip quality was good to excellent overall (exceptions: the incoherent Teen Titans and the very been-there-done-that Metal Men and Demon/Catwoman strips), but a lot of the comics didn’t give me the feel of the old weekly serials they were trying to echo: they felt like first pages of short comic stories and nothing more. Which is fine and I enjoyed them, but I’m not gonna go jerking off over the thing because the first page of eleven or twelve stories is awesome; it’s just too small and early a sample for me to call it “good.”
I’d also call into question the value. People have been exclaiming how this is the same price as a normal comic, but normal comics are overpriced. The giant-size of the layout is nice, definitely, and there’s something to be said for the experience of reading a comic newspaper-style – but it doesn’t give me more story. In fact it gives me less. Yes, yes, I’ve seen multiple people talking about the “square foot of comics” measure as if that was somehow relevant (next up: “Wednesday Comics gives you 24% more wood pulp for your dollar!”). And if they were trying to echo the old serials, why wasn’t this thing printed on cheap newsprint and sold for a buck? That would have been a marketing revolution. As it is, it’s just another (admittedly novel) exercise in marketing to the hardcores, and I can’t get that excited over marketing to the hardcores, because that is what is killing superhero comics.
DIDN’T LIKE
– Lesbian Vampire Killers desperately wants to be the next Shaun of the Dead. Here is all you need to know: it is nowhere near being the next Shaun of the Dead. Avoid. Like the plague.
– Pixar films, at this point, are either an A+ (Wall-E), an A (Ratatouille) or an A- (Cars). On this scale, Up is a solid A – not quite reaching the peaks of Pixar but definitely not one of their “lesser” efforts (where “lesser” is something just about any other filmmakers would kill for). Ed Asner’s voicework fits his character perfectly (and if you don’t at least sniffle in that first ten minutes, what are you made of?) and the little kid character steals just about every scene without feeling forced. The second great summer film of a thus-mostly-starved 2009.
– Panic Breakout is really only fun the first one or two times, but what a one or two times!
– Finally got around to reading Jennifer 8. Lee’s The Fortune Cookie Chronicles and really enjoyed how a treatise on the history of modern Chinese food could serve as commentary on globalism, cultural mutation, immigration, racial attitudes, appropriation and reconcilation. Fascinating, and also brings with it a number of “oh, must try that” food ideas.
DIDN’T LIKE
– Mental is a terrible case of medical-procedural-by-the-numbers, pretending to be daring because it’s dealing with mental illness, but come on – using special effects to make schizophrenia more exciting is both overdone and tasteless. Chris Vance, in the lead, is particularly ill-equipped to handle his role; of course, even if he were a great actor, he’d still have a boring “look I’m kooky and nontraditional for no explicable reason” character to deal with, but he’s not a great actor; half of his work feels like a weak Hugh-Laurie-as-House impersonation minus the balls that makes House so interesting.
– “The Princess and the Dragon” expansion for Carcassonne? Oh my god, is it bad. Mutates one of the best board games of all time into an unrecognizable, not very-fun mess. Avoid. Do not get this expansion.
– Man, what a terrible set of audition episodes for So You Think You Can Dance this year. I went back and speed-rewatched the most recent set of Australian audition episodes for a comparison, and then last year’s Canadian and American auditions, and it’s not just me; this year’s American auditions focused more on jokey bad auditions that were supposedly funny much, much more than average, and the American show is the only one that still even bothers to show many bad auditions at all; in the Aussie and Canuck versions you can literally count the number of joke auditions on one hand, which ironically makes them funnier because they stand out in sharp relief to all the really great dancing. I’m honestly a bit nervous about this season now because I can’t help but wonder: did they not have enough good dancing to showcase?
Leaving aside the question of whether it is a good idea for Verbinski to jump ship, so to speak – and I would say “hell yes,” given that the third Pirates was lacklustre throughout and gasping at the overly-long finish – there then follows extended dialogue about whether or not there is even a point to directing a film version of Bioshock, since the game itself is essentially an interactive movie with a rich plot, gorgeous visual ethos and numerous action sequences beyond the usual “shoot things and walk through corridors” experience of first-person gaming.
I think there is, for the same reason I think there’s a movie (or movies) to be made out of the Half-Life series of games: the protagonist is a blank slate. Your character in Bioshock says literally nothing during the course of the game. Things happen to him and are revealed to him (or her, who knows), but his actions within the game do not serve to illuminate anything about the personality of the protagonist.
That alone offers up a whole new avenue of storytelling opportunity for anyone looking to make a filmic version of the game, and serves to differ a film from the game. And that’s why I think Verbinski’s choice is the right one.
koichi_hirose, in comments here (and if you haven’t nominated me as a G20 Voice blogger yet, then by all means do so!) requests the following post:
My request: what you think about the current state of Magic The Gathering, about the recent blocks, or what decks you prefer yourself.
In general, I’m extremely impressed with Wizards/Hasbro as a support system for Magic and always have been; they’ve got a core understanding of the concept of not just keeping the brand stable but growing it whenever possible, and of designing the game not only for the hardcores but for the casual player as well.
Personally, I barely play Standard (IE “the last few expansions” for nonplayers) right now. I have one Standard deck built – a green/white Elves deck, the cheapest possible deck I could make that was still reasonably competitive (six rare cards) – and I play it every once in a while when I’m in the mood for a constructed tournament. (I will almost always prefer to draft or play sealed deck rather than play constructed.)
Of course, right now Magic’s Standard environment is kind of warped because some of the tribal archetypes introduced in the Lorwyn block (decks built around a single type of creature, such as Elves, Faeries or Treefolk) are so powerful and synergistic compared to anything else that the environment becomes a rock-paper-scissors game of Faeries/Kithkin/Red Deck, and the Alara expansions will be largely window dressing until those tribal decks disappear in October when Lorwyn rotates out of Standard.
(Which is another reason draft is more fun: when I drop a Woolly Thoctar it doesn’t die thirty seconds later, but instead has the impact that a massive fatty creature should have.)
I more frequently play casual vintage multiplayer (using a lot of proxy cards) with my roommates and friends, and that’s good fun, and the Alara cards have been far more effective in that environment. Magic’s a far better casual game than most CCGs and always has been, which is why it’s had so much staying power where most CCGs haven’t.
ME: So the federal budget got announced – FLAPJACKS: Oh, god, are we going to have the boring budget conversation? Stimulus infrastructure spending jobs jobs jobs. There. I said everything we could ever say about the budget. Can we talk about Left 4 Dead now? ME: What is there to talk about? It’s a good game. FLAPJACKS: I have moral issues with it. ME: About a game where you shoot zombies. FLAPJACKS: Yes. ME: I somehow know I’m going to regret asking why you have moral issues with it. FLAPJACKS: Well, technically they are not “zombies.” They are “infected.” Which is why they can run fast like in 28 Days Later, see. So that means that these are simply poor diseased people. ME: But in the game society has completely broken down as a result of there being so many zombies, and as a result of their proclivity to murder anything living. FLAPJACKS: But isn’t that breakdown our failure? Why are we punishing the poor, sick people who, were they in their right non-zombified minds, would be horrified by their actions, and also not very likely to chase after a pipebomb like they were cats pouncing on yarn? ME: The pipebomb thing is weird, isn’t it? FLAPJACKS: The game seems to say that zombies will chase after anything that beeps. So that begs the question: why don’t you get more things that beep? Screw the guns, I’m gonna go find me some battery-operated clock-radios. They’ll keep me alive longer. You don’t go to the gun shop; you find yourself a Radio Shack and you’re ready for any undead zombie swarm. ME: But the superior zombies, the ones with powers – they ignore the beeping. So you need guns to take care of the big bad undead. FLAPJACKS: Clearly second-stage undeath gives one eardrums of steel. ME: I don’t think that’s right. FLAPJACKS: And another thing. How come you can only carry one grenade in this game? Is that even remotely realistic? ME: Sure it is. FLAPJACKS: How is that realistic? Grenades are small. ME: Think about it. Say you are wearing pants with pockets, a shirt, and shoes – FLAPJACKS: And socks. ME: All right, and socks. FLAPJACKS: I don’t want my shoes to smell like feet in the zombie apocalypse. ME: Yes. Okay. Socks. Anyway, my point is this: you wear the medpack like it is a backpack. You have your pistols in holsters. You have your primary gun slung over your shoulder when you don’t use it. This leaves you two pockets: one can hold your pain-pills, and the other holds a grenade. You don’t have room to carry a second grenade. Especially when you consider that your options are either a Molotov cocktail or a pipebomb, neither of which is exactly compact. FLAPJACKS: Firstly, where are all the real grenades? I mean, you find dead Army guys all over the place in this game, and frequently you find huge piles of ammunition and assault rifles and combat shotguns just, like, lying around. They didn’t bring any grenades? ME: What good would real grenades be, though? They don’t beep and they don’t set zombies on fire. Maybe the soldiers used all the real grenades and found out the hard way that grenades aren’t that useful against a zombie swarm. FLAPJACKS: Actually, that makes sense. ME: Of course it does. FLAPJACKS: All right, I withdraw my complaint about the lack of proper grenades. But that doesn’t address my other issue, which is “why don’t I get, like, a fanny pack or something in which I could store extra Molotovs or pipebombs.” ME: Well, you’d need the fanny-pack to be front-slung, right? For easy grenade access. FLAPJACKS: Yes. ME: So do you really want that much gunpowder and/or kerosene right up against your crotch? FLAPJACKS: …point. ME: There we go. FLAPJACKS: Still, I would like to press the development team to include some of my ideas for the next patch. ME: Oh, Christ, not the elephant stampede again. FLAPJACKS: Come on. It would be the ultimate powerup. There is no problem an elephant stampede cannot potentially solve. ME: Putting aside the question of why there would be enough elephants to stampede the zombies in the first place, and the question of how one could realistically summon a herd of elephants in this post-apocalyptic scenario, wouldn’t summoning the elephants be problematic? FLAPJACKS: Why? ME: Ever think that maybe the elephant stampede might be counterproductive? FLAPJACKS: No. ME: Well, what if you got caught in the elephant stampede? Or a teammate? FLAPJACKS: Or Nelson Mandela? ME: …what is Nelson Mandela doing in the zombie apocalypse? FLAPJACKS: He survived brutal imprisonment for thirty years. He’d be able to handle some lousy zombies. ME: Anyway, that’s my point. The elephant stampede – quite apart from being ridiculous – would be counterproductive. FLAPJACKS: But that is exactly why it has to be included. It demands a greater degree of playskill to use effectively. It is not a bludgeon, but a scalpel. ME: A scalpel that is made of maddened elephants. FLAPJACKS: Exactly so.
Jayisgames is doing a vote-off for the best web-games of 2008, and I include the link because my entire purpose in life is to make other people waste precious time so they don’t create precious works of art, properly parent children or bring about world peace.
“Pork and Beans” by Weezer and “So What” by Pink. 2008 was a really great year for “fuck you” songs, as the general frustration of the world with stupid bullshit finally hit its boiling point, and these were two of the best. Weezer’s song was “Fuck you, I’m a nerd” and Pink’s was “Fuck you, my marriage didn’t work out and who are you to comment.” They both had fantastic hooks (Pink’s “na-na-na-na” in particular will burn itself into your brain) and great musicality, and while Weezer’s video might have been a love letter to internet geeks, Pink’s video had Pink dancing naked and chainsawing down a tree, so at best the “best video” contest between these two is a wash.
The Incredible Hercules. Let’s face facts: 2008 was a remarkably shitty year for Big Two superhero comics. Other than the tail end of All-Star Superman‘s glorious twelve-issue run, what was there? “Event” comics repeatedly failed to impress (something which, at this point, should surprise absolutely nobody) and most superhero comics held up as this year’s exemplars of the form (Jason Aaron’s Ghost Rider, say, or Geoff Johns’ work on Green Lantern, or Abnett and Lanning’s writing on Nova and Guardians of the Galaxy) are barely more than what should be expected out of the form – competent, entertaining storytelling that isn’t particularly revolutionary. The one bright light in all of this was Incredible Hercules, a comic which takes the mythological scope of Walt Simonson’s Thor and marries it to a humourous style not unlike that of Giffen and DeMatteis’ Justice League International (with the same core of pathos that that latter title had). Constantly wonderful and only getting better with time.
WALL-E. The single best film Pixar Studios have ever made – and considering this is the studio with Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc. and The Incredibles under its belt, that says something. Confident enough to wed most of its storytelling to physical comedy – and physical comedy created by a junky little robot no less – the scope and ambition of WALL-E is only more breathtaking. Yes, Andrew Stanton and company walked it back in public, claiming that it wasn’t “about” consumerism and the ecological destruction of the planet. The rest of us knew ass-covering bullshit when we heard it.
Nation by Terry Pratchett. Nobody knows how many swings at the plate Pratchett has left in him at this point, so that makes this home run of a book all the more glorious; a book which manages to be horrifying without being gory, romantic without being crass, sad without being melodramatic, spiritual without being moralistic, and praiseworthy of science without being annoyingly self-satisfied. As it is a Pratchett book, it is of course also very, very funny and clever throughout, and its message – of the possible comingling and even necessary interdependence of science and religion – is timely and welcome.
Leverage. God, how did John Rogers pitch this and ever have any trouble? “It’s Ocean’s Eleven versus evil corporations who screw over the little guy.” Why did it take so long for someone in Hollywood to throw money at him to get it made? But finally it happened, and this show is a glorious triumph – funny, exciting and most of all you never, ever have to watch it in Idiot Mode because the characters are doing stupid things for stupid reasons. Leverage is a show where the characters, at their worst, do smart things for stupid reasons. Or stupid things for smart reasons. And that makes all the difference.
Furr by Blitzen Trapper. I like music with energetic beats and operatic ambition, so the fact that I’m putting simple, folky, gentle Blitzen Trapper on my “best” list should serve as notice to how brilliant this record was. The title track is a love song about a werewolf, for crissake – just saying that should prepare you for some of the shittiest filk imaginable, but instead Blitzen Trapper makes it work, avoiding cute jokes and writing pure, eloquent poetry, and sounding all the while like a young version of Bob Dylan backed up by The Band. Just fantastic.
Berlin: City of Smoke. Jason Lutes’ epic continues to be absolutely fucking staggering. You should read this comic. Enough said.
In Bruges. Tanked at the box office, as people expected from the shitty advertising campaign that it would be another Lock, Stock-lite English gangster caper film, but instead this was by turns a funny and solemn story about two gangsters (in Bruges) taking cover after a crime gone horribly wrong, a crime that left scars. The comedy comes from razor-sharp dialogue; the pathos from absolutely brilliant work by Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes, and a story that inverts the usual heh-heh-we’re-gangsters tropes and unabashedly, without moralizing, points out that the criminal life really, really sucks at your soul. The best directorial debut of the year, by a country mile.
Northlanders. Brutal, vicious, and utterly fantastic Viking stories that only served to once again remind comics fans of why Vertigo still matters if you’re not interested in medium-dark fantasy (along with the equally fantastic Scalped). Totally hard-ass and uncompromising about both the virtues and flaws of the Viking world, and the lack of an overarching supernarrative means that Brian Wood can do what he does best – stories more connected by theme than by plot. (With Vikings in them.)
Fallout 3. Everybody else has already said everything that could be said about this game, so I’ll just throw in a backhanded compliment: the game is so crazily chock-full of content that I maxed out at level 20 when I was less than a third of the way through the main plot. Dear Bethesda: please to patch game to give more levels please.
Bob on Survivor. You have to love it when a 57-year-old physics teacher (and clearly still a very fit one) dominates the competition challenges over people half his age and invents multiple realistic-looking fake immunity idols to keep himself in play. Bob was the runaway fan-favorite of Survivor: Gabon and easily one of the most dominant players in years, his only failing being an early willingness to trust the wrong people (which merely made him all the more sympathetic).
The Boys. The next time somebody tells me that Garth Ennis just likes to take the piss out of superhero comics and that’s the only reason he’s writing The Boys, I will make them read #15, wherein Annie, undergoing a severe crisis of faith, demands that God give her a sign He exists, and leaves the church disappointed and on the brink of collapse when nothing happens – and then promptly runs into Hughie, who of course is exactly the sign she asked for. Then I will beat them to death with a lead pipe because I am sick to fucking death of people whining about shit that isn’t true. Be forewarned.
The Battlestar Galactica board game. An ingeniously designed board game, featuring the standard cooperative-survival mechanics one would expect given the setting, but with a brilliant twist: some of the players are actually Cylons and they are secretly trying to destroy humanity. The game’s system is designed to make hiding and striking against humanity a thing of subtlety and play-skill; if you’re really good you can even set up other players to take the fall for you, framing them as Cylons using nothing more than your own ability to lie. Similarly, it takes true observational skill to ferret out a really good Cylon player, as well as time your incarceration of them properly. Yes, it’s kind of a shame that Boomer sucks compared to most of the other characters, but other than that this game is seriously just about perfect in its execution.
Chuck. With a promising mini-season start last year, Chuck was already a solidly entertaining little show, but now? Far and away the most improved show on television; the plots are more clever, the dialogue snappier, the action higher quality and the unrealized romance between Chuck and Sarah satisfyingly boiling away behind a thousand actually-good reasons for them to not be together. Also good: the elevation of the Buy-More supporting cast to credits-level importance. Last season I was worried Chuck might waste them in favour of the annoying guy who plays Morgan. This season – well, less Morgan! That’s a start.
Metropolis by Janelle Monáe.
I trust that was self-explanatory, but if it wasn’t – that blend of nu-funk, futuristic soul and utter batshit craziness (it’s a concept album! Set in 2719!) is like what I think Legion of Super-Heroes should be if it were transposed into musical form. And she’s an obvious music nerd. Any other P.Diddy “discovery” diva-lite would want to be all pretty and sexified in their debut video. She wants to be Robot James Brown. How awesome is that?
2008 was a year that produced many singular and outstanding creative works. These were not those.
Waltz with Bashir. One of the most overrated films of the year, the recipient of far too many movie-critic blowjobs to count. Admittedly, the idea of a documentary presented entirely in rotoscopic animation is novel, but one novel idea doesn’t necessarily make a film good, and once you get past the gee-whiz factor of the cartoony Waking Life visual treatment of the film’s material, what do you really have? You’ve got a documentary that’s somewhere in between indulgent and boring, relying on the “oh this is serious stuff” aura that journalists will cheerfully hype about absolutely any inferior creative work related to the ongoing Israeli-Arab conflict. Pretty cartoons do not redeem it.
“Lollipop” by L’il Wayne. L’il Wayne has so much awesome work under his belt that it seems a cruel trick that this, one of the most annoying songs he’s ever written, should be his biggest mainstream hit ever. It’s not catchy, it’s just repetitive.
Countdown. It seems almost besides the point to mention how fucking terrible Countdown was, because everybody remembers how fucking terrible it was. But people deserve to be reminded of how shitty, how absolutely crap every fucking week of this fucking shitty comic was, in case they are considering buying a DC “event” comic. So: Jason Todd spent a long time becoming Red Robin. Then he quit being Red Robin. Mary Marvel became a magic-eating psycho whore. Then she stopped doing that. Then she started doing it again. Kamandi finally got the origin story nobody ever demanded. God only knows how many pages were spent detailing the slow death-by-superdisease suffered by Karate Kid, which would have been compelling if the payoff hadn’t been “they fail and he dies anyway.” (Memo to Keith Giffen: I know you’re proud that you’ve managed to kill off Karate Kid twice, but at least the first time it only took you one issue.) We met the Earth-3 “good guy” version of the Joker. Then they killed him off. Jimmy Olsen fucked a bug. Then the bug dumped him. Then Jimmy Olsen fought Darkseid. Again: Jimmy Olsen fought Darkseid, and they were serious about this, which gives one new respect for George Lucas because as bad as the prequel trilogy was, at least he never had C-3P0 fight the Emperor. And finally, a series ostensibly intended to “count down” to Final Crisis in the end turned out to have absolutely jack shit to do with Final Crisis, which begs the question what the point of this shitty, shitty comic was in the first place.
Four Christmases. I sat through this when a friend of mine’s son and I couldn’t get into The Transporter 3 and we needed to see something. Sitting outside in the cold for two hours would have been preferable to sitting through this lifeless, unfunny waste of time, a movie which just screams out “we only did it for the paycheque” en masse. If I ever see Vince Vaughn in real life, I will punch him in the cock.
Heroes. Okay, yeah, Heroes always sucked, but I am gratified that this was finally the year where everybody else figured out that it sucked too. Masi Oka, one of the few actors on this show capable of more than two facial expressions, got saddled with plotlines and dialogue apparently designed to make everybody hate his character. (It worked!) The writers continue to come up with new ways to not deal with the fact that right out of the gate they created three characters (Sylar, Hiro and Peter) who are massively overpowered compared to everybody else on the show and who need permanent power-downs or else the show’s idiocy level will rapidly become terminal. Of course, before they do that they need to figure out how to write a basic plot worth a damn. Also, if I ever see the guy who plays Mohinder in real life, I will punch him in the cock too.
The AI in Call of Duty: World at War. When I play the solo mode I want to really feel like I’m in the middle of the biggest war of all time. This is tricky when you have American GIs and Japanese banzai solders shooting at their respective opponents while standing literally shoulder-to-shoulder because the GIs are stuck in “shoot pointlessly at enemy” and the Japanese are stuck in “shoot pointlessly at you.” Do not even get me started on the Russians and their propensity to throw grenades at the same time they’re calling for you to charge something.
Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. Introduced “nuked the fridge” into common parlance to complement “jumped the shark,” wherein the former means “movie franchise jumping from beloved icon to joke nigh-instantaneously,” but the phrase could have just as easily been “swing with the monkeys” or “watch the alien spaceship.” This movie is stupid, where previous Indy movies were so pointedly not, and that is the greatest disappointment imaginable. Shia Labeefs’ status as “Next Big Thing In Hollywood, No Really, We Mean It” aside, he sucked in this. Of course, everybody else sucked in it too – even Harrison Ford for god’s sake – so he’ll probably be fine.
DCU: Decisions. What was the point of this comic, anyway? Never mind that simply getting Judd “I’m A Liberal!” Winick and Bill “I’m a Conservative!” Willingham to tag-team-write a comic doesn’t actually ensure any sense of political balance so much as it boils down political positions to ludicrous cariacature (Lois Lane and Power Girl are Republicans because they’re for “strong national defense,” and Green Arrow is a Democrat because he’s a big enviro-hippie!). Forget that the plot made no sense. But seriously, who was going to care about this comic when real life was more important and interesting than figuring out who Batman would vote for? (And before anybody says “well, they scheduled it months before anybody knew Obama was going to be a candidate” – whatever, any real American election would be more interesting than this comic.)
The third season of Dexter. Oh man I have never seen a show go this badly off the rails before. What was previously sharp and savage got dull and indulgent real goddamned fast. And Jimmy Smits? Jimmy Smits is never bad in anything. What the hell happened? Did they put something in his water? Who is poisoning the waters of Jimmy Smits? I will discover who is doing this thing, and I will harm them!
“I Kissed A Girl” by Katy Perry. Any music critic talking about this piece of shit being “catchy” is trying to earn populist cred. Sometimes shitty popular songs are just that and nothing else. The only thing more annoying than the chorus and the lyrics was the ginned-up “controversy” about Katy Perry (WHO IS TOTALLY STRAIGHT EVERYBODY AND IT IS JUST A SONG) endorsing bisexuality. Christ, like James Dobson needed something else to get him hard?
Comics fanboys pre-emptively whining about The Dark Knight getting ignored by the Oscars. Heads up, guys: Heath Ledger is already practically a lock to win Best Supporting and that’s great. But you know what else? The movie is half an hour too long at least, the sonar thing was distracting and hard to watch, and that middle bit where Jim Gordon is dead and Bruce decides to quit being Batman then Harvey says he’s Batman then it turns out it was all a trick to catch the Joker except why did Bruce tell Alfred he was quitting being Batman – that bit made no fucking sense and Christopher Nolan, that clever little bastard, was just figuring we’d all cream our pants over everything else so much we wouldn’t notice and he was mostly right about that. The Dark Knight is a good movie, close to being a great one, but it wasn’t even the best superhero movie this year (that would be Iron Man). So please shut the fuck up.
Duke Nukem Forever tops Wired‘s Annual Vaporware List this year again, and seriously, I have to ask: who gives a shit about Duke Nukem? I mean, really?
I’m not just talking about “giving a shit about Duke Nukem” in the sense that it has been years and a lot since Duke Nukem 3D came out (what is it now, thirteen years? Fourteen?). Yes, I know all the Duke Nukem jokes and plays on the word “forever” (HEY GUYS THE GAME IS CALLED “DUKE NUKEM FOREVER” AND IT IS TAKING FOREVER TO COME OUT AMIRITE). I’m talking about the actual value of Duke Nukem itself.
Let’s be blunt: Duke Nukem isn’t particularly cool. The character is just a vehicle for recycling catchphrases from other, better settings – Bruce Campbell one-liners, quips from They Live and other John Carpenter flicks back when John Carpenter was still good, that sort of thing. The “attitude” is the product of a more conservative time, back when the original Grand Theft Auto was scandalous (imagine what people back then would have thought of Grand Theft Auto IV), when any minor dig at authority seemed like total and utter rebellion. “Eat shit and die” is not particularly clever.
And the game itself was pretty average, warmed over Doom 2 with a few minor tweaks and shittier weapons. The fact that you could flush the toilets and ogle a highly pixelated stripper didn’t make the game good. It made the game a little grimier, and to the authenticity-starved world of computer gaming in the mid-1990s, I can understand that this almost seemed like the same thing. But we’re nearly fifteen years later now; surely we understand that just a few swears isn’t a big deal any more, right?
Super Mario 63. Quite possibly the best Flash version of a Mario game I have ever seen.
(Seriously, I will never be able to understand Flash game developers working at this level of intrinsic detail. “I am going to spend two years of my life coding a game that can be played for weeks straight, but which most people will stop playing after ten minutes tops!” That level of frustration would just about kill me.)
Okay, I don’t think it’s fair to complain about the Schulz estate “selling out” and making a Snoopy video game, if only because Charles Schulz himself was entirely willing to stick Snoopy on tons and tons of merchandise for the purpose of making a lot of money. And in fairness, the idea of a Snoopy flying ace game is actually a pretty clever one, and the game looks like it could be fun. So that’s good.
However…
The idea of having Zee Germans in this game be Schulz kids is just freakish and weird and wrong on so many levels.
