August 15, 2008 3:44

Review: Star Wars: The Clone Wars. That's Too Many Colons.

I saw Star Wars: The Clone Wars a couple of weeks ago. At the time I thought, meh, it was all right, there were things I liked and things I didn't. I held off on posting a review, and since then I've come to realize that that my reaction was a pretty mild one in the grand scale of things. Clone Wars has inspired some truly epic diatribes over on Ain't It Cool and elsewhere.

Yes, in all truthfulness, it is not a very good movie. The voice-over at the beginning sounds like Regis Philbin. The plot about Jabba's son is just beneath contempt. (I mean, even as a little kid I could tell when I was being pandered to. So who is that stuff for?) Jabba's gay English-speaking uncle is really unfunny. The banter between Anakin and his sassy new padawan is sitcommy and lame. (If it were a 70s TV show they would have called this movie Sky Guy and S.N.I.P.S.) I can remember when Star Wars was exciting and dark and actually meant something. It's one of the Great Cultural Conundrums of our time that Lucas and co. have chosen to opt out of that.

August 15, 2008 2:37

Three Minutes That Were Deleted from Iron Man

These three minutes were deleted from Iron Man, presumably because after they spent $10 million filming them they realized that nothing happened in them:

In other movie news, Quentin Tarantino has apparently cast Samm Levine -- Neal Schweiber from Freaks and Geeks -- in his WWII flick Inglorious Bastards. This is just amazing.

Also amazing -- bad-amazing -- is that MTV is remaking Rocky Horror.

August 14, 2008 12:49

I'm Playing Soul Calibur IV and I Don't Know Why

I've never been that into fighting games. I have a hard time getting past the fact that

1. basically, you're fighting in a 2D world -- forward, back, up, down -- which I mean, come on, I have actually played Doom, so it doesn't exactly feel state of the art

2. real mastery seems to involve memorizing a hell of a lot of special move combos, which I am just too lazy/stupid to actually do

Nevertheless I've been playing a lot of Soul Calibur IV for some reason.

August 13, 2008 4:35

They Rebooted Clue

I know that Clue is not nerdy in its content, but because it takes the form of a board game, I consider it to be inherently nerdy. Which is why I wanted to mention that I just got a copy of the rebooted version of the game, which comes out this fall, and which carefully eradicates any vestiges of period charm from the original. It's done in an incredibly tacky 'tabloid' theme. But they do seem to have jazzed up gameplay a bit, a la the Risk reboot earlier this year, so maybe it's worth taking for a spin.

If you're curious, a few tidbits:

-- It's now set in a fancy "celebrity-style mansion" with a spa, a theater and a patio. No more conservatory. No more billiard room.

-- The characters are the same. Sort of. But Professor Plum is now Victor Plum, 'a self-made video-game design billionaire.' (Because there are lots of those.) And Colonel Mustard is now Jack Mustard, a former pro football player. Etc. Kind of makes you want to kill them all.

-- Weapons: the candlestick, knife and rope are still in. But now you get poison, a baseball bat, an axe, a dumbbell, a pistol, and a trophy.

-- They seem to have complicated the gameplay bit. You can 'start a rumor,' which involves floating a tentative accusation, and draw Clock Cards and Intrigue Cards. And every character has a special Power.

Trivia: non-American people call Clue 'Cluedo.' Hilarious.

In unrelated news, apparently the Robert Jordan books are going to be a movie. Did humanity learn nothing from Eragon?

August 12, 2008 12:16

Two Blog Entries You Should Be Reading

Just when you're ready to break up with the Internet, forever, and take back the lingerie you bought it, you stumble on things that remind you that it's sort of good for something. Like these two blog posts, which make me embarrassed that I pretend to be a professional writer.

1. A friend of mine sent me a link to this recap of Breaking Dawn. It's brilliant. For example, on Edward and Bella's traumatic wedding-night romp:

I bet half the problem would have been solved here if they hadn’t been in the missionary position. No, this is not actually stated. Whatever, you know they were.

She's just saying what we're all thinking.

2. I don't know who this person is, but he calls himself War Nerd, and I'm pretty sure he's a really, really bad human being, but damn, he can definitely write. In particular he has written an essay about the fighting in Georgia.

See, this is the war that I used to see in the paintings commissioned by Defense contractors in Aviation Week and AFJ: a war between two conventional armies, both using air forces and armored columns, in pine-forested terrain.

He's enjoying this way too much.

I want to add, apropos of nothing, that I got an e-mail from somebody plausibly claiming to be Joseph Kahn, director of the Neuromancer movie, pointing out that I shouldn't believe Internet rumors. He is of course correct.