The Bin – 3/12/2010

The Bin – 3/12/2010

Mar 12

Remember when your friendly neighborhood Alert Nerds used to like stuff every week?  We’ve taken that feature and rebuilt it, made it stronger, faster and full of links, miscellania and like a YouTube video or something.  We call it The Bin, even though it’s the Internet and there isn’t, like, a physical bin that we’re putting this stuff in.

Stuff We Like This Week

Jeff: So, there’s a Hawkeye and Mockingbird ongoing. That’s a thing. I love Clint and Bobbi both separately and as a couple, so I am psyched about this. One of my favorite, formative comics storylines was the time travel epic where Bobbi got stuck in the old West and the Avengers fought Rama Tut.

Final Fantasy XIII is a beautiful game, but I find myself only being able to sink maybe two hours at a time into before it starts to overwhelm me.  It struck me that I’ve purchased every first-run Final Fantasy (the main series, not like Chocobo Womens’ Prison or what have you) game to hit the U.S. starting with the improperly-numbered Final Fantasy II on release day. I’m not sure what that says about me, but I do love Final Fantasy.

Matt: I discovered Doug Benson’s I Love Movies podcast one day while searching the internet frantically for Patton Oswalt clips to improve my mood. If you love movies too, and comedy, you will love this podcast. Benson invites fellow comics and actors to sit on stage with him and bullshit for forty-five minutes about movies. New movies, old movies, random movies. Benson’s funny as hell, and his depth of knowledge is part of that; maybe I’m alone but nothing makes me giggle more than a well-placed obscure reference. When he’s got fellow smartasses like Oswalt, Paul F. Tompkins, or Brian Posehn with him, it’s comedy gold. Crawl through the archives to catch the episode featuring Bob Odenkirk, the one with Adam Carolla andn Oswalt, and the recent episode featuring Leonard Maltin Game namesake Mr. Leonard Maltin.

Chris: I’m at GDC, so this could be short and what-can-I-take-on-the-plane oriented. I’m watching Don’t You Forget About Me, which was a documentary about John Hughes, made a few years before he died. It inspired me to download Weird Science for the flight home. I’m watching the shit out of the Tron trailer and listening non-stop to the Tron title track, released at Comic Con last year. Matt is spot on about I Love Movies, and I’ll toss one more into the pot – Mike Schmidt’s 40 Year Old Boy podcast, which is a rarity in podcasting. One guy talking for over an hour. But this guy is an experienced comedian with a sordid history to draw from – lots of laughs.

And finally, GDC – I’m here in a support capacity. All the big stuff for my game comes out later. But I did get to see modNation Racers (PS3) which is due out soon – I think some of the social things, a la Little Big Planet, are going to be fun for a lot of people. Imagine improving your ladder rank not solely based on your racing skills, but on your car skinning skills? Racers earn points for people using their car art, etc. Stuff like that.

I also got to play a lot of Lead and Gold – basically, Team Fortress in the Wild West, only it brings a lot of nice design decisions to the mix. Plus you can shoot a guy’s hat off, which is awesome. That should be coming out soon.

Link Stew

Curious, scared, and baffled by this art project, “Trilogy,” which takes the left side of Star Wars, the middle part of Empire, and the right side of Jedi and plays them on the same screen. Not by time but by visual, so it’s like a movie mashup beyond compare. Fascinating.

Hugo Weaving as the Red Skull is INSPIRED.

Etc.