WWH: Smash All Puny Humans
May 02Today is the start of World War Hulk. The Initiative still isn’t over, but I’m relaxing my grip on it. It’s not Civil War – I don’t need to get them all. Really The Initiative is Marvel figuring out a way to brand what would normally be the downtime between major event story arcs.
And I realized something today, as I started reading the WWH books – I’m really looking forward to it. Civil War was a car crash – the idea of the heroes of the world fighting one another, allying themselves with the bad guys, etc. It was a good statement to make, a super-hero prism taking a look at the stuff happening in the politics of the real world, but while it was intriguing, while I had to slow down and take a look, it wasn’t what I’d call fun. And in the end, there’s only a small handful of heroes I’m that happy with as characters. Spider-man. Thing. Ummm. Punisher, sort of. Luke Cage, m’man. Most of the Mighty Avengers really – fight the power. And Omega Flight, but that’s kind of a knee-jerk thing. We’ll see where it ends up – the writer didn’t get the CSIS acronym right, so this may not go well.
And that’s about it. The rest can go to hell, as far as I care. Ooooh, wait. They are.
I’m really looking forward to WWH. After a year of watching our favorite heroes be shits, WWH is promising a bit of a cliche – the power fantasy. After a year of watching Marvel’s big heroes be pricks, I really can’t wait to watch a focused, non-Pantheon Hulk (ie a non-Banner brained Hulk) either beat some sense into or the shit out of every single one of them.
’nuff said.
Speaking of The Lost Room…
Apr 20I have no commentary on Lost – I got to the fourth episode of the season and then my viewing schedule impoloded. And I haven’t opted to jump to digital recorders just yet, until a few more standards fall into place. I’m just going to do like I did with the first seasons – wait until it’s on DVD and then watch it all back-to-back.
In the meantime, I picked up The Lost Room – a Sci-Fi Channel mini-series. It was on DVD and pretty cheap for two discs. Since I’d heard good things from another friend, I went for it and holy crap – it’s teh awesome!
The story idea is refreshingly brilliant – in the 40s, something happened in a hotel room in New Mexico. The room ceased to exist as part of reality and the items inside were given strange properties. Now, 40 years later, various collectors and fanatics are struggling for control of the items and a cop with no knowledge of what’s going on, ends up stuck in the middle, and forced to solve the mystery of the room in order to save his daughter.
It’s a nice companion to Heroes, really – the idea of average people with not-so-average abilities – only, the abilities come from nail files and clocks, and thus can be taken away.
The rules of the story are really well thought out, which is always a big deal with me. If you’re going to be wacky, there have to be rules, or it turns into Next Generation, where they just invent the magic item they need to solve their problems.
Where it kind of breaks down is at the end, and it’s not that it breaks down, but rather you can clearly see The Salem’s Lot effect – meaning, you can see how they’re hoping the mini-series will transition into a series. Some loose ends aren’t tied up, and not all is right in the world – there are still things to be worked out, and not all the items are known, so there’s a lot of material to work with there.
I’m of two minds about a series, but the DVD is one of the best things I’ve seen in awhile, honestly. I mean, it’s got 8.1 at IMDB, and the Internet Uni-Mind that casts those votes hate everything, so that says something. Right?
Help! 360 has me in its grip! And it's squeezing!
Apr 07
A little known fact about video game developers – when it comes to the amount of video games we play, we’re average. We play more than normal joes, but our time is unusually tight, particularly around deadlines, and it is this shape of our free-time that quirks our time spent with the products of the industry in which we work. We’re prone to short-term, hardcore play – meaning, if we find something we really like, we’ll power through it as fast as we can, lest it get put aside and lost in the shuffle.
We’re also prone to trying the first bit of most every game we get our hands on. And somewhere in between lies good games that get completed by through shift work – one dev stars while a few watch. They wander off to work. Starting dev puts it down and another will take a break from work, and pick it up – repeat until done. The number of games devs have completed by proxy is very, very high. Sure, playing is fun, but we also want to see how the game plays – how does it work?
Me, I got an Xbox 360 at Xmas and some games. I played it for two days around New Years, as I was sick. Then it got put aside for work. I picked it up again a few days ago with the release of Guitar Hero 2 for the 360, and so help me, I’m in trouble.
Must. Get. All. Achievements!
Now I’m online buying hard-to-find, critical darlings, and I just dropped $30 on the 360 games Burger King gave away.
HELP!
But seriously, is it weird to be using Visine when trying to play a perfect score on Heart Shaped Box at 4AM?
AN: One Year Old Pt. 2
Apr 05A whole year and what do I remember most? I remember that Matt and Sarah out-write me and the Galactica drop-launching Vipers and then jumping away. And really, that’s all a person has to remember.
Speaking of Blades of Glory
Apr 02When Matt commented on seeing Blades of Glory (Matt’s score: One surprising thumbs up) it reminded me of this bit of genius marketing – the PR people for Blades of Glory got Ask A Ninja to come to their press junket day. And the results are spectacular. Particularly considering Ninja holds his own against Will Farrell, who can set lesser comedians on fire apparently. Just by quipping at them.
Local boy (local to me, anyhow) Paul Campbell leaves Battlestar Galactica (via a bullet no less) and moves to Hollywood. And gets a pilot! A meta pilot sitcom. And it’s funny. But that just means execs don’t want it. So they put it up on YouTube. And then they start making YouTube shorts. Meta YouTube shorts. And they’re funny. Now there’s pressure to get the show made. Boy, I hope so. I hate TV right now.
And if you’re looking for a good comedy podcast (which are hard to find), I’d like to recommend I Love Movies with Doug Benson. Doug runs with the Mr. Show circle of comedians, so his guest list is solid.
