Like a complete idiot, I didn’t think to take a picture, so here’s a picture of the cover
I’ve been a fan of Barry’s for a long time, so the thing I was looking forward to most about Stumptown Comics Fest was picking up the aborted-tree edition of Hereville. And it’s great, of course. If you’re in Portland, the second day of the Festival is tomorrow (at the Lloyd Center Doubletree), and if you’re not, and the story (girl meets sword) sounds intriguing (and it should), go order it from the web site - several editions are available.
Bad writer’s block today, so I’ve selfishly let my fellow Pandagonians do the heavy lifting on IWD/Blog Against Sexism day and isn’t that just typical male behavior anyway. But I brought you something! Don’t be mad!
The rest is here, cut up into ten sections.
Best soundtrack ever.
Update: Don’t have time for a full-length feature? Here’s something shorter that’s appropriate for the holiday.
I just watched it and I’m not sure what to make of it. You?
Here’s some random, unimportant, but amusing information that I just came across. Has-been actor and part-time boxer Mickey Rourke’s obviously taken quite a few blows to the noggin and perhaps all that extensive awful plastic surgery has taken its toll as well. Here he opines on Dear Leader’s performance regarding Iraq:
MICKEY ROURKE has pledged his support for US President GEORGE W BUSH’s controversial foreign policy in Iraq. The SIN CITY actor, who is famed for being for being outspoken, has come forward as one of the few stars to support the war on terror. The former boxer says, “George is doing a hell of a job during very difficult times, more power to him. Screw all them people who don’t like him.”
It’s a hell of a job all right, and no doubt that we’ve all been screwed as well.
My, the faith is weak if this is what they call Christian outreach these days.
Small bands of masked evangelists, clad in tights and armed with biblical names, argue it is. The violence and intensity of wrestling, they claim, can be the perfect way to attract the alternative, younger crowd.
At the beginning of some “Wrestling for Jesus” shows, wrestler Chase “Darkness” Cliett is strapped to a massive wooden cross on stage as piercing music is played. A group of evil wrestlers beats and bloodies him before the good guys dramatically come to his rescue. Later, after a horned fellow in a red suit is knocked out, the preaching begins.
But it’s not for everyone; many churches won’t even consider letting them perform. One performance ended with real fighting, real cursing and a repentant participant stretched-out face-down in the ring weeping.
Just so you know, you can catch the WFJ show at the Johnston J.C.’s Peach Blossom Festival in Johnston, S.C. on April 1 — and that’s no April Fool’s joke.
Darkness
From: The Hills of Golgotha
Weight: 178lbs
Height: 6′9″
Finishing Move: Lights Out
Quote: “Whatever your mind can conceive and believe your body can achieve”
Entrance Music: “Metal is Forever” (Primal Fear)
Titles Held: Current Tag Team Champions, United States Champion, Cruiserweight Champion
Zion
From: Nagasaki, Japan
Weight: 185lbs
Height: 6′2″
Finish Move: Fall of Zion
Entrance Music: “Your Powerful” (Skillet)
Titles Held: Cruiserweight Champion
Blog: Property of a Lady
Author: Deborah Lipp
Stan Lee and Gene Roddenberry. I should throw Jack Kirby in there too, since Lee took credit for a lot of Kirby’s work, so they say. What do they have in common?
Naked fantasy.
I first started sparking on this idea while reading the wonderful The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon, a chronicle of many things—escape artistry, survivor guilt, the Golem, coming out—among which the birth of superhero comics figured prominently. And clearly these characters were fictionalized Kirbys and Lees, or, going back further, Siegels and Schusters and Kanes and Fingers. And there they were, these guys, these kids, really, a boys club of boy fantasies; hoping and dreaming and basically jerking off, unselfconsciously, unanalytically writing and drawing their nerdy fantasies and sharing them with the world.
That’s what makes them so great. These are raw fantasies, innocent, really. Newer comics are self-conscious, post-Modern, post-Freudian, either studiously artistic or cynically pornographic. Either carefully feminist or sadistically anti-feminist. Not these guys. From the 1930s through the mid-1960s, these guys wrote their dorky little dreams and sold them en masse. “I wanna be a boy sidekick,” “I wanna fly,” “I wanna smash the bad guys and get the girl.” Simple, innocent, fiercely, magnificently false-to-reality and true-to-heart.
Blog: Hoyden-About-Town
Author: TigTog
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There’s been a moderate amount of eyerolling ennui in the feminist blogosphere over yet another magazine cover with supposedly edgy cheesecake shots of nude starlets. Annie Leibowitz took some shots supposedly inspired by Hollywood glamour for Vanity Fair as directed by the designer Tom Ford, and surprise, surprise the shots of the nude teenagers got the cover (Dakota Fanning inside the mag is thankfully reported as fully clothed in her homage to Chanel’s Hollywood). In purely business terms I applaud Vanity Fair’s marketing savvy, I just wish those downplaying the cynical pandering to the male gaze could distinguish weary disgust from genuine outrage, let alone actual feminist concerns.
Lance Mannion, generally one of my favourite reads, posted a long post where it seems he just doesn’t get it (’cos actors have much harder challenges to face in their profession than nudity, like playing murderers, what’s the big deal?). Lance defends the charge that female actors are so much more imposed upon than men with the argument that now that the use of curvaceous body doubles is so widespread due to actual talented actors being skin-and-bones, that female actors are no longer imposed on so much regarding film nudity now (!).
It gets clearer all the time that culture warriors are actually making war on culture, not for it.
The latest evidence for this astute observation comes to us from Fulton, MO, where the number of complaints lodged with the school district about the high school’s performance of the musical “Grease” caused the superintendent to preemptively cancel the spring performance of “The Crucible”, owing to the fact that both of these plays are a) plays where b) the women wear longer skirts than is currently fashionable.
Well, my explanation makes about as much sense as the ones that the citizens interviewed can come up with to explain what exactly these two plays have in common that would result in the complaints lodged against one would naturally result in the cancellation of the second.
Each criticized [”Grease”], complaining that scenes of drinking, smoking and a couple kissing went too far, and glorified conduct that the community tries to discourage. One letter, from someone who had not seen the show but only heard about it, criticized “immoral behavior veiled behind the excuse of acting out a play.”
Smoking, drinking, making out–three elements found in lots of plays, but not in “The Crucible”. So why should what’s objectionable in “Grease” have anything to do with “The Crucible”? The answer is: We’re not saying out loud because if we do, there could be a 1st Amendment problem.
This column at Townhall by Erik Lokkesmoe explaining to conservatives what it takes to make good art is more misguided than mean-spirited, but hell, it’s fun to mock it anyway.
Conservatives, by definition but not always by practice, are curators of the good, the true, and the beautiful.
Jim Crow laws, state-enforced pregnancy, and the Iraq War–all acts of unparalleled beauty, so long as you have the proper mix of sadism and sociopathy in the viewer.
In the popular arts, however, we have become champions of the tame, the trite, and the temporal. (See “safe for the whole family� radio stations, movie reviews that count body parts and swear words, and paintings of nostalgic sugarplum cottages.)
Right away you know this guy’s advice will be bad because he breaks cardinal rule #1–Know your audience. A sideways swipe at Thomas Kinkaid (or however you spell it) is fun and all, but not really going to endear you to anyone in the Townhall readership.
Mistake #1: We try to improve art and entertainment from the top-down and the outside-in. For example, when well-meaning people, flush with cash but bankrupt on talent, attempt to “show Hollywood� by creating films that go around proven creative methods, the result is always the same: direct to video, a waste of time and money. Enduring change, meanwhile, comes from the bottom-up (working your way up from the mailroom) and the inside-out (working within the creative industries).
Oh, the video hits way to close to home. At various points in my life, I’ve been both the perp and the victim in this little situation.
Bonus video: The truth about Marty and Doc.
And even though you know how this exciting piece ends, it’s still a teeth-grinding bit of blogging fun. And I get vindicated, which colors my opinion of the quality of the post in no way whatsoever. Bonus: I knew Dee Dee was my favorite Ramone.
A new maxim of conservative thought: any statement made about “Hollywood”, or popular entertainment in general, if relying on “facts”, is immediately and forthrightly wrong.
I say this not because I disagree with the conservative interpretation of Hollywood as a cesspool of filth and anti-Americanism. I say this because they’re always wrong.
As everyone from Peking to Peoria knows, Hollywood 2005 has had a record breaking year, but the record being broken isn’t one the studios want to announce with a full-page ad in Variety boasting “MOVIE BIZ IN THE PITS: THE NOT-SO–SWEET SMELL OF HOLLYWOOD B.O. â€Â?
With a slump in ticket sales that has surpassed the fifteen week Slump of ’85 (and seems to have much longer “legs�), the question currently on every Hollywood prognosticator’s mind is: what do movie audiences want?
Well, here’s something - the box office has actually been up the past four weeks. I have a theory why, but let’s look at Craiggers’ explanation:
One can only guess. Or take countless polls. Personally, I like to divine my answers the old fashioned way – by using the prescient power of history. Everything we need to know is usually lurking in the past somewhere, and as George Santayana (non-pro) once said, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.â€Â? Or in the case of Hollywood, doomed to remake it…only worse. So let’s fire up the Flux Capaciter, program our DeLorean time machine for 1985, and go in search of lessons to bring back to the future.
Like the bizarre series of similarities found in the Lincoln/Kennedy assassinations, the box office “assassinations� of 1985 and 2005 share some eerie similarities and coincidences.
Both slumps began in a year following the November re-election of a president who was despised by the coasts, the media, and Bruce Springsteen. Both of these re-elected presidents liked to wear cowboy hats and boots. Both presided over ambiguous, hard-to-define wars: the Cold War, the War on Terror. During both campaigns the who’s-who of hip Hollywood actors (who now probably need hip replacement) such as Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman, Jane Fonda, Barbara Streisand and Ed Asner came out in support of their guy (hint: not the one in the cowboy hat).
The cowboy candidates, then and now, had Chuck Norris. During both campaigns, Bruce Springsteen took a tour on the road to encourage people not to vote for the guy in the cowboy hat. The “bad guysâ€Â? in the world–Godless Russian commies in the 80’s; Our-God-4-Allah-ya Islamic Terrorists in the 00’s–also didn’t want the guy in the cowboy hat to win. But they didn’t particularly care for Springsteen either.
Yep - people stopped seeing movies because people who weren’t actually in many of the movies released that year made political statements. It also explains why a movie starring both Hoffman and Striesand, released right after Bush’s reelection, became one of the top grossing movies of all time. Or why one of the most profitable movies of 2005 starred Jane Fonda.
Apparently, the American people are stupid cows tempted to the movies to see people they absolutely hate. Or else, they’re not seeing movies for some reason besides die-hard support of Bush. My philosophy’s the second, this guy’s is obviously the first. Why do conservatives hate Americans, Billy? Why?
(more…)
The Corner is obsessed with the new Geena Davis show, Commander-in-Chief. And by “obsessed”, I mean “batshit crazy” over the show.
The major arguing point seems to be that the show focuses on the issues surrounding a female Commander-in-Chief. Whether or not it does so competently remains to be seen (watching the show last night, it did a fairly good job, but I was a bit hesitant about next week’s “the whole world hits the fan” episode), but it seems to insult the Corner that the show would dare think a woman would have any issues at all being president.
Starting most recently, Warren Bell refuses to watch the show and points out that it’s doubtful anyone actually cares this much. (In this house, we DVRed it.)
Noted TV critic K-Lo says it has some of the worst dialogue on TV, and cites this line as proof:
Worrying that she’s press the button once a month?
Yes, if she say that actual, maybe then. In reality, that’s been a common half-joking but actually-serious response to the idea of a female president. (And the line was, “[T]hat whole ‘once a month will she or won’t she press the button’ thing.”)
K-Lo complains about the abbreviation for the show. This from a woman who still models her nickname after a fading and largely hated actress/singer/future auto loan pitchwoman.
Tim Graham finds secret liberalism in the show’s choice for the dead Republican president - he narrated episodes of PBS’ Frontline.
John Podhoretz gets saucy because the creator of the show has written other movies about Presidents, including The Contender - people would get unduly critical of a female president’s sexuality? Not in a million years! - and a movie where there was a Jewish president. You see, the creator of the show’s a Jew, and short, so this show must be stupid.
Jonah pipes in with commentary on the show’s fake blog. (A laughably inane group blog? What an insult to the Corner!)
K-Lo (AGAIN) criticizes Geena’s choice of baseball teams.
Guess who comments on First Gentleman issues?
John Podhoretz is back, pretending he doesn’t know what happened on the first episode, despite the fact that K-Lo appears to reside in Geena Davis’ linen closet at this point.
Warren Bell says that Geena Davis’ visit to the MNF booth is the “most awkward moment in recent history”, which seems to ignore that entire “Bush handling Katrina” thing rather handily.
Podhoretz, at some point, makes an incomprehensible Davis joke about Day of the Dolphins.
A reader even manages to chime in, finding the whole premise insulting because they made a show about a woman becoming president and treated it as if it was a show about a woman actually becoming president.
As an endcap, this Louis Wittig piece purports that all liberals secretly want to be like George W. Bush, because our entire cabal put all of our energies into Geena Fucking Davis.
In case you lost count, that’s 14 separate items on a show that every single person on the site thinks is awful and is going to fail - and that’s not including previous CiC coverage on the site, which I’ll spare you the horror of. Suffice to say that it reads a lot like the above, except that much more patently clueless. It’s gotta show you just how spare the liberal bias must be on television that the combined minds behind modern-day Alqonquin Blogtable the Corner focus on this to such a disturbingly thorough degree.
Flightplan - Take Red Eye, subtract the tension, and add in the most straightforward “convoluted” plot in history. The movie fails on every level to build suspense, and doesn’t explain half the things it throws out as diversions on the real plot. Also, will continue to piss me off as continual “proof” in the conservative assault on film - since there are Arabs who aren’t terrorists in a movie about terrorists on a plane, it’ll be seen as a slap in the face to anti-terror conservatives. In actuality, it’s a slap in the face to people who have eight bucks to see it.
Just Like Heaven - Ah, the Terri Schiavo movie. Except that Reese Witherspoon somehow has the ability to survive a head-on impact with a semi and maintain no physical damage to any part of her body save her brain. I think she’s some sort of reverse ninja, who can take any pain inflicted upon her and subsume it onto one part of her physiognimy, thereby saving her pixieish good looks.
Exorcism of Emily Rose - You know that a PG-13 exorcism movie has to be good. Cheaply scary, but it at least makes an effort to address the ability of faith to make us perceive the world in a different way. Problem is, it managed to make the debate a yelling match between two sides that I both dislike.
Lord of War - A surprisingly good movie, even despite the bluntness of the message. It’s surprising in large part because it takes a man that you know is unrepentantly in the service of a great evil (gun running), makes him the lead character of the narrative, even portrays him as charismatic and human…and yet you never want him to succeed. You never feel good that he outsmarts the police, you never feel good when he survives a harrowing experience. I wanted him to get one between the eyes. Great job, liberal Hollywood.
I’m saving the movies I actually want to see for this week - Corpse Bride, History of Violence, and, of course, Serenity. Because if I don’t plug this movie (apparently, it has to make $80 million in order to succeed), my friends will shoot me in the face. And at least one of them actually owns a gun.
So, I’m a part of group of Fireflies so hardcore about the movie that they went to see the incomplete version of Serenitythis summer just to be a part of the action. Given that I’m trying to get blogger tickets to the film, here’s a short synopsis of the film:
Joss Whedon, the Oscar® - and Emmy - nominated writer/director responsible for the worldwide television phenomena of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE, ANGEL and FIREFLY, now applies his trademark compassion and wit to a small band of galactic outcasts 500 years in the future in his feature film directorial debut, Serenity. The film centers around Captain Malcolm Reynolds, a hardened veteran (on the losing side) of a galactic civil war, who now ekes out a living pulling off small crimes and transport-for-hire aboard his ship, Serenity. He leads a small, eclectic crew who are the closest thing he has left to family –squabbling, insubordinate and undyingly loyal.
Perhaps more importantly, the film is a mix between a space-based interpretation of Confederate veterans and space-cowboyism. Yglesias (he is a phenomenon, a name unto himself) just checked it out.
Watching Firefly and the burgeoning fan community around it, I can’t help but think about the number of shows that Fox specifically and television in general have cancelled that are simply head and shoulders above what’s actually on. For anyone mourning the loss of Dead Like Me, I highly recommend Wonderfalls, which is a lot like the show (same creator, and same directing style), but with a less cynical George and a romance that actually develops in the first season.
What are your buried TV treasures?
Nintendo releases new Revolution controller. I remember back when Nintendo released the analog N64 controller, and I thought that it would simply be too much control to have. It turned out not to be…but I have the exact same feelings about this.
The “revolutionary” part of the controller isn’t quite revolutionary to anyone who remembers picking up a controller for the first time. My first time was with Blades of Steel, and I remember moving the controller in the direction that I wanted to go rather than just pressing the button. Well, Nintendo’s come full circle, and now you want to move the controller in the direction you want to go.
The controller for Nintendo’s upcoming Revolution home console system is a cordless remote-control-like device designed to be used with only one hand. Two small sensors placed near the TV and a chip inside the controller track its position and orientation, allowing the player to manipulate the action on screen by physically moving the controller itself. For example, you could slash an in-game sword by actually swinging the controller from side to side, turn a race car just by twisting your wrist, or aim your gun in a shooter by pointing the controller where you want to fire.
The controller has seven total buttons: a big A button, a B trigger, two small “a” and “b” buttons, and Start, Select and Home (likely for navigating menus). There’s also a stock add-on with an analog stick and two Z triggers. It’s an intriguing, enthralling idea for a controller, but it’s also Nintendo’s explicit admission that it’s no longer competing with Sony and Microsoft. Porting a game to the Revolution requires a conceptual redesign of the whole endeavor - it’s not just a cross-platform button remapping, but reworking your game so that it moves to the Nintendo baton. They may get some great games out of it…but it’s going to be an alternative niche market.
It may end up being the future of videogames, but it’s probably going to be the future of Sony and Microsoft’s games. IGN has theories on how the controller could work with established genres, but that also assumes that developers have the money to rework a game that they can toss on the PS3 to work with the Revolution. Where ingenuity and brilliance push the system forward, basic economics are likely going to keep it down.
The patent on the original NES has expired…which means you can now purchase a universal NES with wireless controllers.
How many times do I have to set down a goddamn moratorium on conservatives discussing box office receipts? How. Many. Times?
Bill Murchison declares this summer profitless for movie studios (which, of course, it wasn’t - far from it), and then goes on to ask Hollywood to produce more movies with content! and thought-provoking material!
And comic books! If 10 percent of the money spent on bringing comic book characters to cinematic life found its way into the telling of honest stories about the human condition — love, fear, ambition, hatred, sacrifice, etc., etc., etc. — half-empty theaters might fill once more.
Who would make such pictures, though — pictures with a point? The cases of arrested development who run today’s studios think smash-crash-bash equals wisdom — to the extent they believe in such an odd commodity as wisdom.
…Actually, three of the most profitable movies of the year were comic-book movies (Batman Begins, Fantastic Four and Sin City). You know, I understand not liking a movie. That’s fine. But to presume that if you didn’t like a movie, it didn’t make money, when there are about twelve sites readily available that will give you every money-related statistic you need? Perhaps the reason for Hollywood’s box office decline is that conservatives have been showing up at an actual box, demanding tickets for Cinderella Man.
Jonah Goldberg pops back in, and leads me to create the National Review Theory Of Box Office Profits: A movie’s box office fortune runs inversely proportional to the numer of times conservative columnists try to claim it as a “conservative movie”. You don’t want to see the upcoming Bow Wow flick Roll Bounce succeed? Write to David Limbaugh and tell him what a stunning example of conservative principles it is - the movie will be on DVD within two months.
Oh, and to address Jonah’s point: watch some fucking TV. Seriously. We’ll be up to our eyeballs in series about the fight against various evils this year - between CBSI and various anti-terror/crime series, you’ll be getting more than enough righteous retribution against the forces of evil. Of course, because some of those crimes involve sex, you’re going to have to wear your adult diapers before you turn them on, but come on - the bad people with the erections and the fluids get punished. Give it a try!
I’ve fallen out of love with Office Space. With the announcement of the new special edition disc, I’ve realized that the movie no longer holds the same panache and flair that it once did, in large part because its novelty as a studio comedy (a rare piece that doesn’t rely on the stock tripod of R-rated comedies: a pain scene, a sex scene, and the “embarassment is right around the corner” scene - see Wedding Crashers and 40-Year-Old Virgin for recent examples) has been overtaken by its ubiquity.
There hasn’t been another Office Space since it was released - hell, there hasn’t even been another first half of Office Space. Oh, there have been some funny movies, depending on your tastes, but I can’t honeslty think of another “quote the whole thing” film in that time period. But I’d like one. Because I’m tired of Office Space quotes. It’s not that the movie, taken on its own, isn’t funny. It’s that in the lineage of great, funny films, it’s the last in an evolutionary chain, even despite its weaknesses - there’s no real heir to that mantle, nothing else to watch alongside or even in replacement of it. The closest I’ve personally come are Adult Swim episodes, but it’s simply not the same.
I need new funny stuff before Will Ferrell strikes again, people.
Your new bomb-of-a-movie-that-needs-to-be-saved-because-it-makes-conservatives-feel-good: The Great Raid. Hugh Hewitt writes a stirring defense of the film’s merits - not whether or not it’s any good (the movie’s been delayed for two years, received barely any advertsing upon release, and from the two people I’ve heard from that saw it, it should have just been shelved, or else cut down 45 minutes), but that it strives towards something nominally conservative.
What it ends up showing is that conservatives are willing to reward abject crap so long as they can get some ideological mileage out of it. In the conservative battle for Hollywood’s heart, this is misfire #2: no matter how shitty the film, so long as it meanders towards something that’s nominally conservative it will find support. Conservatives want to watch shitty movies that don’t make money. If conservatives want more conservative movies, stop rewarding massively unprofitable crap. If I want to see more movies about fighter planes, Stealth and Valiant are not the movies on which to stake my movement’s claim.
I’m just saving money left and right these days.
Zelda’s been delayed for the GCN, and the lineup of games that are supposed to appeal in its wake are righteously underwhelming.
This takes care of the two major problems I had with my GameCube.
1.) Despite the peripheral which allows me to do so, I wasn’t playing enough Game Boy games on my GCN.
2.) I kept feeling the lack of Mario-themed games. Luigi’s Mansion, Super Mario Sunshine, Mario Party 5 and 6, Mario Kart: Double Dash, Mario Power Tennis, Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door just wasn’t enough Mario. I can’t wait until we get Mario Resident Evil and Mario Zelda, personally.
I’ve been a lifelong Nintendo fan, but I’m about at my wits’ end with this. It’s like Nintendo is bound and determined to lose all the people who grew up with them by summarily refusing to grow up itself, and the new gamers are generally going to follow the older ones to where the cool stuff is. Their traditional franchises are even faltering - StarFox Assault was a huge disappointment, the only franchise that can come out on a reliable basis is the increasingly mind-numbing Mario Party, and the Donkey Konga games (both music and platforming) are pale imitations of real Nintendo games. Every publisher misses, but Nintendo is simply pulling a longer, glorified Sega into the pit of third-party publishing at this point.
I’m not ready to close the door on them just yet, but if I’m this dissatisfied with them, there’s no chance in hell that they’re winning over the casual GTA-Halo-Madden gamer.
Shakespeare’s Sister writes an interesting post on women in videogames, which leads me to think about the evolution of female characters in videogames.
I remember the first time I really wanted to be a woman in a videogame - the Princess in Super Mario Bros. 2. There was really only one reason for it: she could float. In the utilitarian world of videogames, that was the point when I think a lot of us began to realize that it didn’t matter what gender the character was, as long as they had the coolest power. Unfortunately, the blocky, undefined graphics of that era still led to us playing everything from intrepid boys to intrepid men, with the odd intrepid robot or genderless animal thrown in. The only real way to signal “female” was to put a bow on someone’s head or make them pink, which probably had something to do with the whole “ew, girl” thing.
My favorite Street Fighter II character was Chun Li. At arcades around Ohio, I could be seen ringing up a mediocre record of losses and defeats playing everyone’s favorite homicidal Rockette. And yet, I remember the first few times I played as her (the game’s only female character until Super SF II’s Cammy), the main thing everyone noticed was that her breast appeared to have blood on it in the victory animation. It was enough to make you take up Balrog at points.
In all honesty, the major genre for progress in female videogame portrayals has been fighting games - most notably, Dead Or Alive. While seemingly majorly focused on the gigantic breasts of every single female character (the “small” character seems to be a 34DD, as opposed to the positively cowlike 38DD Tina), the game houses a little secret: the female characters kick ridiculous amounts of ass. The fact that they’re all - as far as videogames go - supermodels tends to obscure the fact that it’s one of the few game formulas that doesn’t penalize female characters by giving them less life, weaker moves or simply reducing them to short skirts and bouncing tits. (In a game where you can have every major appendage broken at least once in 30 seconds and still win a fight, it’s the least they could do.)
It’s incremental progress in an industry that’s largely 30-year-old men entertaining themselves, but hey - it’s something. And Ms. Pac Man was such a better game than Pac Man.
Next year it’s troops vs. insurgents, with the cheerleaders all being 101st Keyboarders.
(Via The Talent Show, who I now thank for cementing my decision to save up money for the next Legend of Zelda instead.)
Mona Charen hops on the Hot Coffee bandwagon a few weeks late, and other than the requisite misinformation about the patch, based largely on this poorly written NRO piece, I must comment on this:
And that really did work…for Midway, Sega and a host of other manufacturers, who found games like Mortal Kombat and Night Trap pushed to the top of sales lists for no other reason than that they were getting free press every night. You can’t find a pre-ban copy of GTA:SA anywhere, because everyone’s purchasing it to get in on the controversy. It’s free advertising, largely to late teen and adult gamers who can afford to swoop up copies. Bennett and Lieberman’s main contribution to the video game industry has been the indirect death of Sega and Nintendo’s current third-place in the market - there’s been a reaction to “kiddie” games that has aged the average gamer (the people who are playing games now are, in large part, the people who were playing games in the 80s - they’re simply demanding that games change along with their tastes).
Nobody was “shamed” in the early 1990s - as it stands, they pretty much made out like bandits, and Joe Lieberman’s own party really can’t stand him. Who came out on the better end of that deal?
Remember when I predicted the “deeply conservative” analysis of The Island a couple of weeks back?
[…]
The story, set in the mid-21st century, opens with a seeming utopia. Everyone is taken care of, with round-the-clock health care and mandatory good nutrition, and exhorted to be happy. The white-and-stainless-steel sterile environment protects the inhabitants from a “contamination” that supposedly destroyed life in the outside world. Those lucky enough to win a special lottery, though, get to go to an island paradise.
What they do not know is that they are all clones of wealthy people in the outside world. When a “sponsor” needs an organ transplant, his clone wins the lottery and disappearsâ€â€?not to an island but to a hospital to be “harvested.”
The corporation offering this service assures consumers that the clones are not really human, that they have no consciousness, that they exist in a “vegetative state.” Echoing the Terry Schiavo and stem-cell rhetoric, the executives insist that they are not really killing people, but rather are curing diseases and thus “saving lives.”
Unfortunately, the problem with The Island’s version of cloning is that they’re making fully functioning people that they’re lying to. Now, I don’t know about you, but I can’t put an embryo in a form-fitting white bodysuit. Well, I can, but it just kind of lays there, and then I have to wash the suit. It’s a movie about real issues in cloning in the same way that The Karate Kid is a movie about real issues in immigration.
In all honesty, this could help the embryonic stem-cell side. Embryonic stem cell research steadfastly avoids cloning, which will in turn help us avoid watching a bunch of socially awkward clones do pointless busywork while promoting Aquafina. That’s a future none of us wants. Embryonic stem cell research can simply take the unused excess from in vitro fertilization, which is apparently totally acceptable, and, in turn, never use a single clone, nor would they ever have to do anything to any organism even resembling a human being.
Of course, considering that the movie’s a huge flop, I think we can take from this that America is wildly pro-cloning.
Granny’s suing Take Two/Rockstar for the Hot Coffee mod. How long until this joins the pantheon of frivolous lawsuits? Uh…I give it half past Rick Santorum donating his entire salary to NOW.
From the story:
Florence Cohen, 85, of New York, said in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that the game’s manufacturer, Rockstar Games, and its parent company, New York-based Take Two Interactive Software Inc., engaged in false, misleading and deceptive practices.
She sought unspecified damages on behalf of herself and all consumers nationwide, saying the company should give up its profits from the game for what amounted to false advertising, consumer deception and unfair business practices.
Cohen said in the suit that she bought the game in late 2004 for her grandson when it was rated “M” for mature, for players 17 and older. According to the suit, she directed that it be taken away from her grandson, which was done.
So, let’s get this straight - it was okay for your 14-year-old when it was only supposed to be played by those 17 and older, but it’s entirely inappropriate when, after substantial modification, it’s only okay for those 18 and older.
A very simple solution: give the game back to the kid on his 15th birthday, and call it a day.
This brings up one of my biggest pet peeves about American rating systems - we differentiate between 17 and 18 for a reason that I still haven’t discovered. What grand act of maturity occurs between 17 and 18 that allows me to see genitals directly without my brains bleeding out my ears? For instance, the rear of the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas box says, in plain English, “Strong Sexual Content”. So does the GTA: Vice City box. What does that mean?
So, what about that particular minigame, which depicts some great dry-humping action and big ol’ blocky titties, is not covered by that descriptor? What makes something absolutely not okay for a 17 year-old, but a-okay for an 18 year-old?
Cheryl Felicia Rhoads decides to blast Michael Moore’s film festival, largely because she was somewhere in the general physical proximity of it relative to the universe.
Inasmuch as I care about this article, it comes solely because of her opposition to the film The Woodsman:
Now, here’s the problem. Kevin Bacon is the main character, a recently released pedophile who’s trying to make it outside of prison. It’s a performance that’s awkward and troubling, and which, if you watch it (a novel thing, the actual viewing of completed films for judgement and review), garners absolutely no sympathy for his pedophilic behavior. He never asks a single person to “understand” his plight, and the film never takes the position that pedophilia is okay - you do, however, view his struggle to overcome pedophilia sympathetically. The movie’s penultimate scene involves him beating the hell out of another pedophile for assaulting a child, followed by him attempting to repair his relationship with his sister, who distrusts him for the crimes he committed.
He’s sick, and he knows it, and he hates it. If you have sympathy for the character, it has approximately jack shit to do with your wanting his sexual abuse of children to be excused, and everything with your desire to see him overcome his sickness. This movie could only be considered sympathetic to pedophiles if you consider the very existence of a pedophile on film an expression of sympathy.
The portion she’s most likely bitching about (inaccurately) is a part where the secretary at the lumber mill Kevin Bacon works at plasters signs all over the workplace relating to his crimes. This has nothing to do with whether or not communities should be notified that sex offenders live on their street, and everything to do with whether or not it’s right to hound someone at their job for a transgression that’s not relevant to their work. Again, pedophilia isn’t excused, unless its very mention constitutes an unacceptable stain on her psyche.
If that’s the case, I’d heartily advise she stop watching anything except public access TV, and even then, only the channel with the garbage alerts and the road closings.
For those of you who have TiVo, what’s your opinion of it? I’m thinking of taking advantage of the free TiVo offer, and it’s pretty much the same monthly cost as Netflix.
From the Hillary Clinton “My Cat’s Breath Smells Like Cat Food” branch of sociology:
Let me get this straight: kids with a predilection towards disruptive, aggressive behavior react differently to violent stimuli.
I’ve decided to conduct an experiment in this vein. I’m going to head down to the morgue and stab corpses with steak knives. If they react, it proves that stabbing is bad for people. If they don’t, it proves that stabbing is a healthy and normal part of life.
What do you mean that’s in no way scientific, and it’s a really fucked up way to make a point? I’ve got knives, and nothing to stab!
Yesterday, I got accused of missing the point on the GTA:SA non-scandal, largely because Take Two lied about the nature of the Hot Coffee material’s inclusion in the game. To be perfectly honest, the fact that the material was there is the least of my concerns - Rockstar and Take Two are covering ass, overreacting right alongside the ESRB and Congress to not only draw attention to their game, but also to provide further cover in the future for the next game that will again draw all the typical moral outrage and needless kvetching that ignores the enforceable rating which should have kept GTA:SA out of the hands of anyone who shouldn’t have playing it anyway.
The material that was in the game is already in a handful of other M-rated games, and whatever Take Two/Rockstar’s conduct, any effort to further ban the game for including material that the ESRB already determined earns an M rating, for material that can’t actually be played in a normal release version of the game…well, the ESRB isn’t giving the game a rating based on what’s in it, it’s vindication from the company because the ESRB didn’t know it was there.
Farhad Manjoo has more on the completely unsexy sex scandal, including the fact that the transparent Democratic (specifically Hillary) attempt to get some culture-warrior cachet from this is ridiculous, and basically sells out the youth vote that thinks this is ridiculous to appeal to conservative voters who wouldn’t vote for Hillary, or most Dems, anyway. Dems don’t have to cheer on Hot Coffee, but of all the things to be concerned about, are we seriously concerned over a scene in a videogame that takes hours to get to and is easily beaten by your average Cinemax block of programming from 11-3 in the morning?
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has now been given a mark-of-death AO rating by the ESRB for…for…well, let the NYT explain it:
To unlock the hidden scene, a user must download a program from the Internet known as Hot Coffee that was created by fans of the game. The scene depicts mostly clothed digital people performing sex movements.
“An artist makes a painting, then doesn’t like the first version and paints over the canvas with a new painting, right?” said Rodney Walker, a spokesman for Rockstar Games. “That’s what happened here. Hackers on the Internet made a program that scratches the canvas to reveal an earlier draft of the game.”
Yesterday’s decision by the rating board is sure to fuel tension between game companies and a subset of their players, known as modders, who make modifications for their favorite titles. Many companies, including Rockstar, have traditionally encouraged modders as a way of extending the life and relevance of their games.
But yesterday’s action may also encourage publishers to make their games less alterable so that they are not held responsible for the changes that modders make or the old code that they unearth.
Rockstar’s official response is a mix of caution and annoyance - understandable, since the Hot Coffee mod isn’t exactly as simple as the Konami code. It requires an AR Max and this input code, which is actually illegal, once you get right down to it.
It does raise the far more serious aspect of what this does to the modding community. I’ve spent more than my fair shair of time downloading mods to PC games, the vast majority of which are nowhere near as fun or as technologically sound as one might hope, but if publishers can now be held responsible for people making their games into something they were never intended to be, where do we stop? Does this mark an end to “build your own level” creators, because a neo-Nazi group might build a swastika skate park, or an end to chat functions which allow cursing and adult language?
Oh, and I did make an effort to find the game this morning. I have recall receipts from Target and Circuit City, and most dedicated videogame stores have completely recalled the game. I did find a copy at Meijer, however. If you’re in the market for the pre-ban version of the game, your best bet is probably a grocery store or a used electronics store that also carries used videogames.
And yes, Democrats are the ones pushing this. Thanks, guys. Kotaku has a lot more on the story.
UPDATE: I just remembered: PS2 game God of War has a sex simulation game…with nudity. It got a Mature rating, and is still sold by the same people banning GTA.
