Jordan Minor's Obligatory Blog

Pie Planet 17 Painful Memories

2012-02-29T01:53:00.001-06:00

ANGST

The osCars

2012-02-28T00:30:00.000-06:00

Who needs structure (or proofreading)? Here are my random Oscar thoughts.

Turns out last year's show wasn't better just because James Franco's irony is funnier than Billy Crystal's everything. No, last year just featured way more interesting movies. There was Inception, Social Network, Black Swan, 127 Hours, Toy Story 3 and pretty much everything but The King's Speech, which by the way wasn't bad but just too safe. Out of this year's bunch I only really got into Moneyball and Midnight in Paris. I saw Tree of Life but don't have enough time to get into here (long story short it's very pretty but either too crazy or not crazy enough and Brad Pitt is really good in it too.) The Help and The Artist are meh for their own reasons and unfortunately I did not have the chance to see the remaining nominees.

So much of the ceremony, at least until it picked up towards the end, was about looking backwards. "Hey guys, remember movies? They were cool." Between that and the praise of nostalgic film porn like The Artist and Hugo it's looking increasingly less likely that the awards are actually trying to make themselves more relevant. Even legitimately funny bits like the focus group sketch and those Ellen commercials were about the past. Also, and I'm not saying he didn't deserve it because I really think he did, but there is something telling that Christopher Plummer became the oldest actor to receive an Oscar that night. Again though, Beginners looks awesome and he looks awesome in it.

And here's where I stop trying...

Chris Rock was funny and veteran voice actress Tara Strong's anger over his voice acting joke on Twitter is almost as funny.

Cirque Du Soleil was really neat. FLYING CAREY GRANTS!

None of these movies are Drive.

#MerylStreepHumbleBrag, #AngelinaJoliesRightLeg

Yeah Muppets!

Best movie idea my friends and I came to while watching was Cars 3: The osCars.

Also this video exists which is great.

Stuff I Did This Week 2/24/2012

2012-02-24T11:20:00.001-06:00

T.A.W.F.

Grooh Review

End Night Review

TripIt 3.0 Makes the Perfect Getaways

Stringfly, An Interactive Communication Hub

Pie Planet 16 The Svurian Squad

2012-02-22T00:16:00.000-06:00

It's pronounced "suh-furrian"

The Street Fighter

2012-02-19T16:44:00.000-06:00

Today I just wanted to share this recent internet discovery I made with you guys. It's a web series called 'The Street Fighter" made by The Game Station. They usually put out more comedic gaming videos but this was their first attempt at something more dramatic. Sure it isn't perfect and has plenty of issues inherent to amateur productions but what I like about it is how it portrays gaming as a totally natural part of someone's life. Phil plays a lot of games but he healthily has his priorities straight as a father and someone looking for a job. Like great sports movies it recognizes that the sport itself really isn't the point. It's the people. I'll just let the rest speak for itself. Enjoy!

The other episodes are after the break.

At least it isn't "The Tester" #teamegoraptor

Stuff I Did This Week 2/17/2012

2012-02-17T11:07:00.000-06:00

I finally convinced someone to let me write about Babysitting Mama. It's all downhill from here.

NBN-tendo: Gaming Gimmicks

EMC Review

Love is in the Air in iSchool Dreams: My Valentine

Pie Planet 15-2 Midnight Dagger Unmasked 2

2012-02-15T00:49:00.000-06:00

Unleashed? Unmasked? Whatever.

Has it been a year already?

2012-02-11T02:46:00.000-06:00

Yes.

One year ago today I posted on this blog for the very first time. In New Media I talked about how having a personal blog was the next step for me both as a writer and fan of the internet in general. So far it has paid off great. It's been really fun writing about the stuff I find interesting and I'm pretty sure it's helping me land some writing gigs so yes, when people tell you it's smart to start a blog to showcase your work they aren't kidding.

I don't really have a favorite post because how could I but here are your guys' five most popular posts based on hits.

Cool Post Bro- 1800 hits

My Little Pony vs. Monster High: Capturing the Key Demographic - 1679 hits

Mind Dump 3- True Stories Bro - 954 hits

Tron Legacy Reconfigured sort of Review - 625 hits

Why Do I Own This?: Laser Pointer - 420 (heh) hits

Those results are kind of crazy. Cool Post Bro? Really?

Seriously though thanks to everyone who actually reads this digital collection of my thoughts/celebration of my own narcissism. Stay tuned because there is something really awesome in the works that I can't wait to share more about. Really though most of you reading this already know what it is.

Here's this thing as a gift. It's great.

Stuff I Did This Week 2/10/2012

2012-02-10T16:00:00.000-06:00

Fred Armisen and candy

Portlandia: The Show Hipsters Hate

Tic Tic Viewr is a Minty Fresh Augmented Reality Experience

Pie Planet 15 Midnight Dagger Unmasked

2012-02-08T02:24:00.001-06:00

#cooltuesday

Coming Soon...

2012-02-06T12:08:00.000-06:00

The next big thing for reals...

"Followers"

More news to come.

Stuff I Did This Week 2/3/2012

2012-02-03T11:16:00.000-06:00

This weekend, the 2012 Sports Ball Bowl!

Also these things I wrote

NBN-tendo: The Fight over Fighting Games

Guide the Light in Flight of the Fireflies

Nature Treks- Healing with Color Review

Elements+ is a Double Decker Labyrinth

Pie Planet 14 The Pie Planet Haunting

2012-02-01T14:35:00.000-06:00

Darkness and darkness and greasy, greasy darkness.

So I Saw The Artist...

2012-01-29T23:35:00.000-06:00

Time for another series of observations in a post that barely qualifies as a review.

While my movie of last year may have been Drive, it seems like the academy's will be The Artist. After seeing it that's understandable, and luckily it's not bad.

Yes, it's centered around its silent film homage gimmick but it's a very well executed gimmick. Plus, while it is 4x3, seeing an old-styled movie at such a better resolution is surreal. Not to mention the plethora of beautiful shots.

The actors are fine and do a good job replicating an antiquated acting style. When the film gets more emotional they prove to be up to that task too. The dog is great though and I can't stand dogs.

Sound does occasionally appear but it's to mess with audience expectations and it's great. The soundtrack on the other hand, while very nice (partially because it's not all original) tries too hard at making the audience feel a specific way. I can't really blame the film for that since it is an old silent movie technique but it was still noticeable.

What I can blame the film for is the totally inconsequential story. There is a plot but it feels like the thing the filmmakers cared the least about. I sometimes talk mess on Singing in the Rain for its semi-disinterested handling of the Hollywood sound transition but outside of a few sequences, The Artist makes Singin in the Rain look like a documentary on the subject. Add in a love story with no real arcs or reasons to care about the characters outside of charming acting and it becomes clear how much the gimmick is the point of the film.

Again though, it's a very well-executed gimmick. If this wins best picture then sure, whatever.

John Goodman is pretty good too.

Stuff I Did This Week 1/27/2012

2012-01-27T11:09:00.000-06:00

It's not about what I did, but what I'm about to do...

Smartr Contacts is a Magic Address Book

Stay in the Game with Team Stream HD

Glitch Tank Review

Strange Cases: The Tarot Card Mystery HD Review

Pie Planet 13 The Midnight Dagger

2012-01-25T14:33:00.000-06:00

Oh god, this arc

Movie O' 2011: Drive

2012-01-22T20:56:00.000-06:00

I don't buy many physical copies of movies these days because why would I. However, after seeing Drive for the second time a few weeks I ago realized that I wanted to own it and at that moment I realized it was my top movie of last year.

Oscar nominations come out soon so this is relevant. Unlike last year where stuff like The Social Network and Inception and other stuff I had legitimate interest in was up for big prizes this year I don't know and don't really care what's going to happen and not just because James Franco isn't coming back.. I'm not the only one with this dilemma either. I've heard plenty of my film major friends say stuff like "I guess The Artist is the big movie this year but meh." Keep in mind that this isn't some anti-Oscar bait thing. I thought that The King's Speech was fine. No, it's just that not much this year struck that balance of being arty and being something I personally thought was good.

Even with all of those qualifiers though, I legitimately like Drive a lot on its own merits. It's my favorite movie of the year not the movie I thought was the least bad. As much as there is a bias against genre movies sometimes I feel like constantly praising something like Captain America or Rise of the Planet of the Apes just because they are really good genre movies is almost as bad. Meanwhile, Drive manages to have the intelligence and quality performances of "higher" cinema as well as the action and style of more genre fare.

Produced by one of the members of Daft Punk so it has that going for it.

If you haven't caught on by now, this isn't a review of Drive more just my thoughts on it and related subjects. Full disclosure, these other projects I've got going on mean that this is the kind of form most original posts on this blog are going to be in. Here are a few review-type thoughts though. Yes, the music is amazing. Yes, Albert Brooks is amazing. Yes, it's very slow in the beginning but there is a definitive point where stuff gets crazy and that dichotomy is very effective. Yes, scorpions.

With the 10 film pool, there is a distinct chance of Drive getting some academy nominations therefore giving me some stake in the awards but it doesn't matter. It's already proven itself to be my favorite movie of 2011.

And a real human being and a real hero. Couldn't resist.

Stuff I Did This Week 1/20/2012

2012-01-20T11:13:00.000-06:00

I teased that I was up to some stuff and now it's time to reveal one of them. After the rousing success of my Octodad 2 article, I'll be co-writing a video game column with Mr. DJ DeWitt on the premiere Northwestern Univeristy news and entertainment website North by Northwestern. It's called NBN-tendo. Amazing. My posts will be showing up every other week. Check out the first one now.

Gaming in 2011 and what’s coming next, pt. 1

And I wrote this iOS nonsense too.

Mushroom Madness Review

Feed Baby Birds in Dino Bird

Pie Planet 12-2 Glueman 2

2012-01-18T15:03:00.000-06:00

Fight SOPA, by reading Pie Planet

Today

2012-01-16T03:51:00.000-06:00

Stuff I Did This Week 1/13/2012

2012-01-13T11:06:00.000-06:00

Just hit 20,000 page views. Let's celebrate with more stuff I wrote.

Guitar Apprentice for iPad Rocks CES 2012

Amazon Launches iPad-Optimized Kindle Store Web App

ON Voicefeed Updated in Time for CES 2012

Pie Planet 12 Glueman

2012-01-11T02:19:00.000-06:00

This arc includes I character I created in like Kindergarten. Yes, this thing has references that only I get.

Uh Oh Politics: The Cycle

2012-01-09T00:08:00.001-06:00

Not to spoil too much of the very new and very awesome The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword but towards the end a charter makes this curse, "This is not the end. My hate... never perishes. It is born anew in a cycle with no end!" It's fitting that this has come out right in the middle of another presidential election spectacle. One of the most fascinating aspects of growing up fairly aware of politics is year after year slowly understanding just how cyclical the whole thing is. It's one thing to read history books making connections between different eras but it's a whole other experience entirely to watch the darn thing happen again in real-time.

What may set this year is just how completely inept the Republican candidates are but there are enough articles out there explaining that point better than I ever could (of course this is the internet so be wary of your typical, inexplicable and occasional despicable Ron Paul supporters.) However, while the world does change in substantial ways, after looking past the new levels of insanity and Pokemon references and filthy alternate meanings of last names, I've finally accepted that this is just them having their turn again. Not say to they I think Republicans will take the presidency like they did the house but it's just their turn to be relevant again.

Growing up with Clinton, my naive mind thought that Bush Jr. was an unfortunate detour that would be corrected through Obama. But we're on the verge of that "detour" happening once more because it's really the cycle revealing its ironic sense of balance yet again. It isn't the most terrible situation. Constantly going through Democrat's good-intentions but fearful and disorganized nature vs Republican's ability to get stuff done no matter how evil and crazy it can be leaves the country in a kind of stalemate where nothing can get much better or much worse. So at least there's that... I guess.

I realize that to some this is very obvious, myself included. But it has still been interesting to watch, think and write about. Besides for reasons yet to be revealed, I won't be putting original gaming articles on here so politics was the next best thing. It's a game too anyway, just with higher stakes.

Stuff I Did This Week 1/6/2012

2012-01-06T14:58:00.000-06:00

2012 continues.

iCilada Review

New Updates Hit SugarSync iOS App

Sticky Ball HD Review

Battleground Defense Amps Up the Tower Defense Action

The Minor Lords: Archibald & Remus Review

Pie Planet 11 The Emo Emu

2012-01-04T15:07:00.000-06:00

New year, new puns, new Pie Planet.

New Year

2012-01-01T18:35:00.000-06:00

Kwanzaa unfortunately ends today which must mean that the new year is upon us. Not much to say now but know that as I prepare to fly back to Chicago tomorrow, I'm preparing to go back to the place where I have opportunities to do some pretty cool things. Even now plans are in the works for awesome projects that'll undoubtedly find their way to this blog which, amazingly, is almost a year old and quickly approaching 20,000 page views.

Stay tuned and have happy new year!

-Jordan Minor (who else?)

Stuff I Did This Week 12/30/2011

2011-12-30T13:36:00.000-06:00

This

Donkey Jump Review

It isn't very good.

Pie Planet 10 The Anniversary

2011-12-28T13:35:00.000-06:00

Seeing as Pie Planet was originally spread across three distinct books, book two and book three both start with arcs that are meant to be "clip shows" of the previous books and help readers deal with the increasing importance of the plot. Is this arc a little irrelevant now that that the whole thing is being archived. Yes but here it is anyway. VOLUME II STARTS NOW!

Kwanzaa Starts Today

2011-12-26T22:43:00.001-06:00

That is all

Happy Holidays

Stuff I Did This Week 12/23/2011

2011-12-23T15:09:00.000-06:00

I did things

Tweens HD Review

MotherKnows is a Pocket Pediatrician

iStopMotion for iPad Lets Us All be Animators

Turn the Tables with Misunderstood Pigs

Mystery Manor: Hidden Adventure Out Now for iPad

Happy holidays and whatever

Pie Planet 9 The Storm Emperor

2011-12-21T15:59:00.000-06:00

To make up for missing last week what with all that hard drive nonsense, here's the entire two-part finale to the first "volume" of Pie Planet. Enjoy and Happy Holidays!

I'm back

2011-12-19T14:28:00.000-06:00

Sorry for the little hiatus but the hard drive on my laptop crashed and iPads are not suitable blogging replacements. Everything is mostly good now though and it's time to get back to it. Also, during the blackout I went a little crazy on Twitter so check that out. That's the only real update for today. Actually one more thing. Making videos is hard, so the "Game Baby Dialogues" series I teased a while back probably won't happen, at least for a while. Movement is starting to happen on my projects though so look out for that. Plus, if you get your hopes down, it'll be a pleasant surprise if any Game Baby stuff does happen. That's a good way to view life in general.

Stuff I Did This Week 12/9/2011

2011-12-09T17:58:00.000-06:00

I'm going to be here for a while thanks to Xmas

So I'll probably have more time to write stuff like this

Mystery Ball Review

Galaxix Review

Google Currents, Google’s New Magazine Reader, Arrives on the App Store

Pie Planet 8-2 Colada Alone 2

2011-12-07T03:34:00.000-06:00

The secret is a cloning machine.

So I Saw the Muppets

2011-12-05T04:47:00.000-06:00

(The Toy Story short in the beginning of this is worth it just for the puns alone like Tae Kwon Doe, a fighting female deer)

This will be even less of a review than my other "sort of reviews."

Weirdly enough, the first time I remember seeing The Muppets they weren't in their original puppet forms. Instead, I grew up loving the "Muppet Babies" cartoon of all things. Eventually though I learned to love Kermit and company in their original felt forms.

I think part of the appeal of The Muppets, and puppets in general, is that they are like cartoons that actually exist. Kermit is a talking frog who can light a real match. That's that crazy Jim Henson, hippie social change stuff right there.

But what sets this movie apart for ordinary puppet fare is just how legitimately funny it is for all kinds of people. It's like Pixar in the way it mixes genuine heart with genuine comedy and smart pop culture references. It's kind of hard to describe how it all works, or really trying to put that much thought into it would ruin something this innately good. It just works, it always has, and that trend of just working continues in this latest movie.

These remain the greatest Muppets

I've seen some people complain about the Walter and Jason Segel storyline but even as a non-fan of Segel and his works (HIMYM, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, I Love You Man) and his Dave Coulier face I think the whole emotional arc of their story works really well for the reintroduction this movie seeks to be. Plus all of their songs are really sweet and funny despite not holding a candle to "The Rainbow Connection" or even Fozzie Bear's fake Reno version.

No one really needs a review of this movie though or at least not from me. It's really good. It's legitimately funny. Both James Carville and Zach Galifianakis are in it. That's all you need to know. Just see it already. It needs to make more money than Breaking Dawn to justify the existence of people (although that's the only one I plan on seeing due to it's sheer weirdness).

Check this out too.

Stuff I Did This Week 12/2/2011

2011-12-02T14:50:00.000-06:00

I was in this movie

Also I wrote this thing

Make 'Em Laugh with Laugh Sync

Pie Planet 8- Colada Alone

2011-11-30T12:05:00.000-06:00

What if Peggy Olsen were to a talking beverage?

Call me Janet Jackson

2011-11-28T13:00:00.000-06:00

This is my 100th post.

Too busy to write anything else so just enjoy that reference.

Stuff I Did This week 11/25/2011

2011-11-25T11:50:00.001-06:00

Isn't it great that the Muppets are a thing again? Especially this guy?

What's also great is the stuff I managed to write this week

Bagatelle Pinball Review

Manage Personal Data with Venticento Studio's Apps

ROAD., A Digital Auto Museum for iPad

voidScapes Review

Pie Planet 7-2 The P.T. War 2

2011-11-23T18:02:00.000-06:00

Home for the holidays.

On Holidays

2011-11-21T13:47:00.000-06:00

What with finals and plane trips happening, coming up with an original post for this week has proved to be somewhat of a challenge. Then I went to a Christmas party in the middle of November and it all clicked.

Christmas celebrations start way too early these days.

I get why. People love Christmas and talking about it earlier allows them to be happier longer. Retailers love the Christmas spirit because it encourages more shopping. There was a time, at least in my mind, when the 25 days of Christmas was literally the first 25 days of December. Then it crept up to Black Friday to get rid of that pesky lull between Christmas and the closest holiday before it, Thanksgiving. This year though I swear I saw Christmas stuff at the CVS as soon as Halloween was over.

What bothers me about this isn’t the blatant consumerism because whatever shopping can be cool. No, what I don’t like is the marginalization of Thanksgiving since it’s not really a shopping-based holiday. To be fair though, my affinity for Thanksgiving is a very personal one. My birthday is always on or around Thanksgiving so that means it’s a day where I see my family and get presents, the two things people usually associate with Thanksgiving. Therefore, for me Christmas has also been a tad redundant, certainly cool, but not quite as exciting. I’m also not a very religious person so really the best thing Christmas has going for it is a longer break from school and an exponential increase in people playing Charlie Brown music.

So yeah that’s just me. But what’s the point of this blog anyway?

Now Kwanzaa on the other hand…

And how about those people that just have decorations on their houses all year long. There was this one family in my neighborhood that would do it and my mom loved it but I just couldn't stand it. Then one day they moved and the new family took down the decorations. Of course it made my mom really sad. So one day I'm driving through town in December, during actual Christmas season, and see the undecorated house. I decided to do something. I stop, get out of my car and knock on the door. No one answers. I wait a few minutes and finally open the door, get on the floor, everybody walk the dinosaur.

Stuff I Did This Week 11/18/2011

2011-11-18T12:10:00.000-06:00

So many new words written by me...

Battle Group Review

PlayUp, a Social Network for Sports Fans

Snappy Dragons Review

Save Money this Holiday with ShopSmart for iPad

Get Album Flow for Free and Bring Cover Flow Back to iPad

frosted

Pie Planet 7- The P.T. War

2011-11-16T12:22:00.000-06:00

Get your politics out of my Pie Planet

Uh Oh Politics: Andrew Breitbart

2011-11-14T15:55:00.000-06:00

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this but the circumstances of my life have forced to me to have a somewhat decent familiarity with politics. It’s not that I mind. Politics are fascinating and it’s fun to go from thinking about games that ultimately don't matter (video games) to games that do (elections). What with the spectacle of idiocy that is the Republican search for their presidential candidate continuing to… continue, this is as good a time as any to maybe start writing more stuff about this nonsense.

Also, everyone should know that I’m incredibly biased. I’m not going to pretend I’m not liberal. I’m not really going to try to be fair. What else is a blog for than to just write down your opinions anyway? Just know that going in.

What’s the actual topic of this post? The speech given by Andrew Breitbart, a reverse-Michael Moore-ish figure and creator of conservative blogs like "Big Hollywood", "Big Journalism" and "Big Government", I had recently had the pleasure of listening to.

The most bizarre thing was that while Breitbart kept insisting that liberals use tactics like calling others racists and homophobes to distract from policy issues, Breitbart never really brought up any policy issues himself so neither will I. I guess all I can do is share some of the most interesting observations.

The audience was all old people.

Breitbart used to be liberal and Arianna Huffington used to be conservative. It was during one of those conversions that the “Huffington Post” was born.

Breitbart would occasionally make these strange, unfunny jokes about his Hispanic sister and Chaz Bono and Kurt Cobain's death and “twiddlefingers” and porn and Jon Stewart.

Of course Occupy Wall Street and their lack of work ethic was discussed but that also went off into weird comments about the uselessness and hilarity of women, and multiculturalism and “queer studies” and how education and the lamestream media are controlled by a Marxist conspiracy.

People applauded for illiteracy.

Bankers are an ethereal concept.

One clearly young and clearly dude had his hand raised the whole time but never got to ask his question. Instead, questions were written on cards and Breitbart got to pick which one he would entertain.

Super relevant figures like Dennis Miller were discussed.

I’m still staring at my notes trying to understand the Coca-Cola analogy he was trying to make.
Calling white people crackers wasn’t a bad joke but unfortunately that led into a discussion on how the NAACP is actually racist and that Herman Cain and Clarence Thomas somehow aren’t terrible. Also, he was such a hipster because he liked Herman Cain before it was cool.

Liberals are cruel fascists (of course not overly touchy-feely do-nothings) who ruined Los Angeles and hate the internet because it promotes freedom.

When multiculturalism and political correctness run amok and pit people against each other, everyone suffers but mostly white men. YOU POOR WHITE MEN.

“Sorry your education sucks.”

“Every day it’s like Christmas when someone else gets raped at Occupy Wall Street.”

My takeaway? Breitbart is kind of like a second-rate Glenn Beck and I mean that as a compliment because while they are both really, really wrong and terrible, Breitbart isn’t as theatrical or outright crazy. The one nice thing about being one of the only liberals at a college Republican event is at least people don’t constantly interrupt someone they agree with, except to cheer. That way I can hear the pure insanity uninterrupted unlike at the health care town hall meeting I went to back in 2009. In any case, those who want to know about the latest hypocritical Hollywood homosexual agenda should keep tabs on this guy and his websites.

Pie Planet 6-2 Pie Fighter Tournament 2

2011-11-09T12:36:00.000-06:00

Anime is a thing you guys

Stuff I Did This Week 11/7/2011

2011-11-07T15:15:00.000-06:00

Complications arose that kept this from going up last Friday but here it is now. Expect the next one next Friday.

Monkey Bongo Review

Cooking Dash Kicks it up a Notch with Emeril Lagasse

SPICE WEASELS

A Blog Post About Blog Posts

2011-11-03T15:28:00.001-05:00

Here's the deal with this post. I was going to write it for one website but by the time it was finished they decided they didn't want it anymore because what they were focusing on had changed. Journalism. Then I kind of halfheartedly tried to get this onto other places so it wouldn't be a complete waste and now I'm just posting it here for you lovely people to enjoy. Please excuse the somewhat professional sounding language. That's not what this blog is about.

When Peter Merholz jokingly said "blog" as slang for Jorn Barger's "weblog" term in 1999, little did he know that it would soon become synonymous with the new expressive, personal and participatory version of the internet: Web 2.0. By giving users a platform to share their thoughts, information and perspective in a variety of media, sites like Blogger, Wordpress, and Tumblr have become some of the most popular sites on the net with Alexa traffic rankings of 7, 18, and 46 respectively. As those who grew up surrounded by technology continue further into their adulthood, activities like blogging are becoming more and more prominent in their lives.

"I think it's more interesting to see the perspective of someone in your own age group," said Jenna Frasier, 19, a native of South Hackensack, N.J., currently studying journalism at Northwestern University. "The writing is clearer and more conversational." Having a keen grasp on blogging is even more important for aspiring journalists like Frasier as blogs like "The Huffington Post" and "The Drudge Report" are having more and more influence in areas where traditional journalism previously dominated. Also, entertainment blogs like "Slashfilm" or Frasier's own personal movie blog "frasir.tumblr.com" are picking up where newspaper film critics left off.

Those hoping to make a living off of their blog are told to use a variety of promotion techniques like backlinking and search engine optimization. However, for some bloggers, promotion comes unexpectedly. After launching his creative writing blog "Linguistic Gimmicks" in March 2011, 19-year-old Northwestern University film student Robbie Stern, from St. Johns, Fla., was given the chance to have his stories published by "North by Northwestern," an award-winning student magazine. "I was very excited at the prospect of expanding my audience," said Stern. "I've gotten a great response from people reading my stories. I'm excited to have this new publishing outlet."

Beyond just spreading their information or sharing their work with others, blogging has allowed students to more effectively do something they have always done: goof off. "Yeast Fairchild" is a blog started by the residents of Northwestern University's Communications Residential College located in the East Fairchild building. Inspired by the site "Bread People," "Yeast Fairchild" takes the names of the building's residents and turns them into bread puns with matching photo manipulated pictures. For example, Jordan Minor becomes "Jordanish Minor." Besides just being incredibly silly, the site has helped to foster a stronger community between the freshmen and returning sophomores.

"I'll be sitting at dinner and all I will see is a table full of bread people," said Yeast Fairchild co-founder Connor (Naanor) Sears, a 19-year-old Northwestern University journalism student from Knoxville, Tenn. "There have actually been moments where I've known a freshmen by their bread name before their real name. It's funny but also kind of scary.

The internet is still a relatively new phenomenon. As such, blogging and other web-based forms of communication still have a lot of changes ahead of them. The people that will drive these changes are students like Frasier, Stern and Sears as well of those who have yet to start. For anyone out there thinking about blogging themselves, consider this endorsement by Stern, "Why not post your material online? Only good and heightened exposure can come from it."

Pie Planet 6- Pie Fighter Tournament

2011-11-02T12:33:00.001-05:00

I think this is where it crosses the line from dumb thing to dumb anime thing.

Love Me Some Lovecraft: Hypnos and more

2011-10-31T04:13:00.001-05:00

Halloween, it’s the perfect day to end our short and strange journey through the works of H.P. Lovecraft. With the final entry “Hypnos”, the emphasis is on the short as the version I read was only about a dozen pages. As such, telling too much about the story would just give the whole thing away. All you need to know is that it involves dreams, statues that are sometimes people, and of course bizarre monsters. The quick pace at which it moves heightens the bizarre, frightening, and dare I say, dreamlike tone. Plus, it is so short that one has very little to lose by reading it.

So that’s it. I’m done. There’s no movie trailer to post or anything so we’re done with this. Disappointed? Well how about you watch this crappy teaser about this new thing I may potentially start doing? Enjoy!

SPOOKY

Stuff I Did This Week 10/28/2011

2011-10-28T12:05:00.000-05:00

Bird's the Word HD Review

THAT'S IT

Pie Planet 5- Pie Planet History Lessons

2011-10-26T12:12:00.000-05:00

The mythology gets denser...

Love Me Some Lovecraft: At the Mountains of Madness

2011-10-24T12:10:00.000-05:00

The inter-dimensional terror gets slightly longer and more snow-filled this week with the 12-chapter novella At The Mountains of Madness.

I had been aware of “Call of Cthulhu” for some time but it was At the Mountains of Madness that started off all of this nonsense. I wanted to buy a book on iBooks just to check it out and buying the whole H.P. Lovecraft collection for just one extra dollar than buying this novella on this own made too much sense.

Basically, some dudes from Miskatonic U head off to Antarctica and find some weird starfish alien corpses. More investigation into the caves reveals the history of a hyper-intelligent race of “Elder Things” that once lived there. These guys were cool and opposed Cthulhu but unfortunately the weird, replicating and squishy Shoggoth beasts they created to do menial labor ended up like destroying everything. Then a Shoggoth shows up and the dudes get out but once everyone is safe on a helicopter something even crazier comes into view and one dude goes insane.

It’s a good story that follows the typical Lovecraftian mold but if anything the length works against it. There is too much build up of people walking around in the snow describing technical mountain climbing jargon instead of getting terrorized. There are hints of craziness throughout but it takes too long for stuff to get going.

For a while Guillermo Del Toro was set to film this but the combination of insane budget and insane r-ratedness stopped that dead in its tracks. It’s a shame because he’s so good and making weird and awesome nightmare creatures (Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth) and “weird and awesome nightmare creatures” is totally what Lovecraft is about.

Next week we finish with… I don’t know I’m tired so maybe we’ll do “Hypnos.”

Stuff I (octo)Did This Week 10/21/2011

2011-10-21T12:35:00.000-05:00

OMG I WROTE THE FIRST HANDS-ON PREVIEW OF OCTODAD 2 READ IT HERE IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY.

I wrote these things too

Mixr Review

SlideShark Brings Easy PowerPoint Viewing to iPad

Hope's Quest Review

but

OMG OCTODAD, OMG OCTODAD RETWEETS! OMG HOPEFULLY MORE GAME STUFF FROM ME COMING TO NBN (North By Northwestern, the premier Northwestern magazine/website)

BRAP BRAP!

Pie Planet 4- Club Citrus

2011-10-19T12:08:00.001-05:00

This week stuff ramps down before the big big plot starts up. Absurd, I know.

Love Me Some Lovecraft: The Dunwich Horror

2011-10-17T15:14:00.000-05:00

When someone tries to unleash a demon, you should take him seriously even if his name is Wilbur Whateley. That's the lesson of this week's story "The Dunwich Horror."

Continuing last week's theme of humans hooking up with monster-men, "The Dunwich Horror" follows one peculiar half-thing Wilbur Whateley. After growing up abnormally fast and albino, Wilbur goes about trying conceal... something in his wizard grandfather's shed up in Dunwich. Whatever it is, to unleash it Wilbur needs to get his hands on H.P. Lovecraft's favorite evil bible, the Necronomicon. But when he heads over to Miskatonic University to get the only English copy he is killed by a dog and, like, turns into goo.

What happens next is why this is one of Lovecraft's happier(?) stories in that the good guys confront the evil and actually win. The whole affair is more action-packed than usual too. The dog is the real hero though, because without it Wilbur's plan would actually succeeded and Earth would've been boned. Also, for those of you keeping scorecards of what being shows up in which story, this week's villain is one Yog-Sothoth.

As a relatively more traditional story, what with there being fighting, victory and a recognizable human-ish villain, there have been a fair share of adaptations of "The Dunwich Horror." The trailer below is from the 1970 version with Dean Stockwell and Ed Begley.

Next week we graduate from short stories to full-on novellas with At The Mountains of Madness.

Stuff I Did This Week 10/14/2011

2011-10-14T12:42:00.000-05:00

Halloween is about to be a thing isn't it. I should probably start looking for an ironic costume. In the meantime here's what I wrote this week.

Monster Madness HD Review

Isle of Tune HD Review

diamonds

Pie Planet 3-2- Microwave 2

2011-10-12T12:03:00.002-05:00

And now, the conclusion to the beginning of the beginning of the end... of the first part.

Love Me Some Lovecraft: The Shadow Over Innsmouth

2011-10-10T15:55:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the lack of a "stuff I did this week" post last week but I honestly didn't do anything. At least, nothing on the internet. But now I'm back for another one of these. Fish people and bizarre race metaphors abound in this week's HP Lovecraft short story review type thing.

Like a lot of mostly cool people living in the past, HP Lovecraft had a lot of not cool qualities. Take for example this week's short story "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." On the surface you have this typical Lovecraftian story about a dude who discovers this town full of weird hicks who are slowly morphing into fish people because of some bizarre cross-mating agreement the town had with "The Deep Ones" many years ago. There are your usual vague allusions to Cthulhu and his kind, a kind of depressing twist ending and once again the idea of horror literally lurking beneath the waves.

However, when one looks past all of the funny names and monsters details, what we have here is HP Lovecraft basically saying how gross and wrong he thinks biracial people are. That kind of blood purity thought is not surprising given the era but it kind of casts a shadow over "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" ironically enough.

Anyone looking to see this story as a movie but way worse and with way more Spanish people should check out Dagon on instant streaming. The dude wears a Miskatonic University, Lovecraft's reoccurring fake college, shirt the whole time. Almost makes up for how bad the movie is.

Next week, dogs beat demons in "The Dunwich Horror."

Pie Planet 3- Microwave

2011-10-05T15:33:00.001-05:00

This time, stuff gets real

Love Me Some Lovecraft: The Call of Cthulhu

2011-10-04T13:57:00.000-05:00

For reasons that you should hopefully discover in the coming months, I read several works by classic horror writer H.P. Lovecraft over the summer, despite my stance on reading. What with this being October and Halloween and stuff this is probably as good a month as any to share my short thoughts on these weird tales.

Lovecraft is of course famous for his "Cthulhu Mythos" and the story which first presented much of the backstory of the titular deity is the subject of this first post "The Call of Cthulhu."

The short story is less of a continuous narrative and more of a loose framework to connect three even shorter stories about people encountering the giant octopus-faced monster in a variety if ways. Whether one sees it in a dream, stumbles across one of it's human cults or actually fights it in it's home realm of R'lyeh, the overall point of the story is protagonist discovering that "Oh man, Cthulhu is like totally a real thing. That is all kinds of messed up."

There are some themes here that'll crop up in later stories in the mythos, most notably the idea of someone discovering an unstoppable, otherworldly terror with a "th" sound in it's name lurking behind our otherwise mundane universe. Plus the immaculately detailed writing is all told through stuff like letters and journal entries, so between this and stuff like Dracula and Frankenstein, I'm guessing that was just how old horror writers did things.

Something worth checking out is the 45-minute black and white silent film adaptation the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society put out in 2005. It's currently on Netflix watch instantly.

Next week, we'll head straight to the racism with "The Shadow over Innsmouth."

Stuff I Did This Week 9/30/2011

2011-09-30T17:10:00.001-05:00

Only the chosen people can know what that image means.

But the rest of you can read what I wrote this week on the internet.

Grouptime Combines Messaging and Social Networking

PocketCloud Update Brings a New Kind of Storage to iOS

Ball Towers HD Review

massacre

Pie Planet 2- Living Together

2011-09-28T15:24:00.000-05:00

This is still happening. Spelling mistakes are too. Lost already? Just click that "pie planet" label at the bottom to get caught up.

Pie puns must be what prepared me for Yeast Fairchild.

Mind Dump 7- Incorrect Opinions

2011-09-26T16:25:00.001-05:00

I believe very strongly that certain things that are technically subjective opinions can be objectively wrong. This can range from views on some games to certain aspects of other cultures. However, the key to having this opinion while not becoming a hypocrite is recognizing one's own incorrect opinions like eating cereal without milk or the posts below.

1. I have no problem with curse words (although I try not to curse online since it lasts forever for all to see) and think the whole idea of words you shouldn't say is dumb and contrary to what language is about. Granted, overuse of a curse word is a problem but so is overuse of any word. It's one thing to curse at someone and have them be offended since you are insulting them but if someone is mad because I like stubbed my toe or something and cursed near them they can go... do certain things to themselves.

Racial slurs are a bit different since targeting a certain group is inherent in their meaning regardless of context but I would gladly stop caring about them if it meant living in world where no one cared about cursing.

2. I love writing. At times it is hard to start but once I get going it's like a faucet that can't be turned off. However, I don't really care for reading which I recognize is super weird. Just certain little things about books like their spines, holding them, turning pages, reading words on a page and other intangible qualities others find sentimental bug me. Maybe it is because I'm such a screenager. That would probably explain why I'd rather read a book on my iPad (or in theory a Kindle but to me the idea of buying a whole device just to read books is ludicrous).

Also, it's not that I think it's wrong to put books on this pedestal of being the most intellectual medium but rather other medium, like movies or especially games, are underrated in their intellectual merit. I feel film is usually a more compelling narrative delivery device, why spend pages describing something when one could just show it, and that the internet is a better information collection device, two of books' main uses. I would rather watch a movie based on a book before reading the book it was based on every single time (that includes comics too) and although most games stories aren't good, they are fun to play and think about so it kind of doesn't matter.

3. I don't care at all about being spoiled for movies or anything else for that matter. In fact, I actively seek spoilers out since rapid information collecting is a hallmark of good journalism. To me if a piece of work doesn't succeed without some kind of twist ending, then it only works once and therefore fails. You can only be spoiled once but movies should stand up to repeated viewings. Here are some more arguments if you want but it basically says that when one isn't preoccupied trying to predict the plot they can appreciate the work more. Besides, what's the use in predicting a movie since whatever the answer is, it already exists. Whether or not you guessed it doesn't really matter. This is all a part of my upcoming film nihilism theory.

4. I appreciate grand, interesting failures over safe, boring but total competent affairs. That's why I still think about Ang Lee's super slow and borderline unwatchable Hulk movie way more often than the new one. That's also why Speed Racer is great, the third Matrix movie is better than the second one and why Pirates of the Caribbean 3 is the second best out of the four. Spider-Man 3 is pretty good too.

Anyone mad about any of this should consult the title of this post.

Stuff I Did This Week 9/23/2011

2011-09-23T15:59:00.000-05:00

Only one review, Running Sheep HD, and one news post, Formspring for iPhone, but this week I also helped start a wonderful Tumblr, Yeast Fairchild. Bread People is one of the good kinds of Tumblrs I was talking about and Yeast Fairchild is that but with people in my dorm, East Fairchild/CRC, turned into bread instead of celebrities. Please to enjoy.

Bread

Pie Planet 1- The Beginning

2011-09-21T16:18:00.000-05:00

A while ago I mentioned this comic I made back in high school called "Pie Planet." Well, here at Northwestern it has developed a small, quasi-ironic following but only three physical copies of the entire three-volume series exist. So I'm giving into pressure (and lack of time to produce new content) and will be putting out one story arc each Wednesday, straight out of 2006, no context, HORRIBLE HORRIBLE SPELLING MISTAKES and all.

Enjoy

PUNS

Big Stupid Things with Big Stupid Plots

2011-09-20T01:29:00.002-05:00

Who else thinks it's ridiculously awesome when franchises with no right to have stupidly dense mythologies, have, stupidly dense mythologies. That's the topic of this post where we'll be taking a look at The Fast and The Furious and the Saw franchises.

Horror movies, particular slashers, have always had an affinity for crazy dense inter-character relationships, probably because they are so inclined towards sequels. But since they don't take themselves so seriously, it never really mattered. With Saw, while it is silly, there are so many utterly meaningless characters that take themselves and their huge web of connections so seriously, as does the movie itself, that it reaches an unheard level of ridiculousness. In the seventh, and last (?), Saw, this character from the first movie shows up and it's supposed to be like this big reveal. WHY WOULD ANY CARE ABOUT THIS EVER? Of course, this is the same series that killed of its main villain before its halfway point and had people just stumble into his preplanned traps like months after the fact.

With The Fast and the Furious, I probably could've just written a post about its naming methods.

The Fast and the Furious

2 Fast 2 Furious

The Fast and the Furious:Tokyo Drift aka 3 Fast 3 Furious (in my mind)

Fast and Furious (4eva)

Fast Five

And the upcoming Fast Six.

But it also has this absurd, convoluted timeline where like some movies are taking place either before or like concurrently with other movies. Currently, 3 Fast 3 Furious is the most recent event so far. Combine that with how it has all these characters that appear in one movie and return in other movies like people are supposed to care. Continuity in car action movies.

Why is this happening? I blame comics.

Stuff I Did This Week 9/16/2011

2011-09-16T14:46:00.000-05:00

Another week(ish), another recap of stuff I wrote on this internet this week.

ProSel, A Mobile Sales Solution for iPad

Hypnoblocks Review

Shantae: Risky's Revenge Coming Soon to the App Store

Frogger Decades Review

ONE MILLION DOLLARS

On Star Wars

2011-09-11T23:37:00.002-05:00

So the Star Wars movies are coming out on Blu-ray or already came out or whatever and people are getting mad because George Lucas added even more terrible/hilarious changes like this one...

Here's the thing. I like Star Wars, a lot actually and definitely more than Star Trek, but since it was never really a part of my formative childhood experience (except for the original 2D Clone Wars maybe but not the horrible 3D one) I'm not so emotionally attached to it that the prequels offended me the way they do some people. Granted, although episode 3 kind of has its moments, they are terrible movies as Red Letter Media so brilliantly illustrates but I've always felt that getting legitimately mad was kind of dumb.

Yes, the original Star Wars were group efforts with input from people who were far better writers and directors than George Lucas. However, at the end of the day STAR WARS BELONGS TO GEORGE LUCAS! IT DOES NOT BELONG TO YOU FANS! That means that although it's kind of sad that he's ruining these movies (although ruin is a but harsh) and he totally should let people get the originals, they are his movies to do with as he pleases. Plus, he is the single person most responsible for MAKING STAR WARS, so the credit he should get for that alone should trump most complaints.Calm down.

I say this because I know if I created a popular franchise, the last thing that would stop me from changing it would be angry, self-entitled fans. Art belongs to the artist.

if anyone wants to know what I thought about "The Help"

2011-09-08T23:44:00.000-05:00

I've been a part of a few lively Facebook conversations about whether or not the movie The Help is good or not. I wonder why they wanted my opinion? Eventually this less than enthusiastic response from the Association of Black Women came out and although I had yet to see the movie that pretty much seemed like a slightly more angry version of what I felt about it.

I've now seen the movie, and although I don't feel like reviewing it (the numerous subplots help and hurt) I will say this. I think it's good. Granted, there is a large female aspect to it that I don't have the perspective to comment on. However, from the racial perspective I will say that, although it totally is a "white guilt" movie, that doesn't mean it's absolutely horrible like The Blind Side. You know what else are white guilt movies? Avatar, The Last Samurai, Last of the Mohicans, Pocahontas and probably the upcoming Machine Gun Preacher. But most of those are at least decent.

Having just watched the latest Tyler Perry movie and realizing how much money he makes selling garbage to people starving for content, I was reminded of how much the white domination of Hollywood really sucks. The slight marginalization of black characters in favor of white protagonists in The Help is the result of that. However, it is a;so a well-done, very well-acted movie and that still counts for something.

Back to moving in...

Stuff I Did This Week 9/7/2011

2011-09-07T14:20:00.000-05:00

Northwestern University part 2 starts tomorrow and I'm so excited but before my flight, here's the stuff I wrote on the internet this week.

Square&Ball HD Review

Ant Raid Review

Robot 99 Review

COLLEGE

IGN: I Went There

2011-09-05T16:04:00.000-05:00

San Francisco is a fine vacation spot. There are In-N-Out Burgers, Luchador masks, and this amazing antique arcade museum I hope to tell people more about later. But my main reason for going was to see what it's like to work at a gaming website office, something I hope to eventually. Luckily, IGN.com's First Friday tour was the glimpse I was waiting for.

podcast room

Truth be told, there isn't much to describe. Imagine what an office full of people who loves games enough to write about them professionally would look like and you are probably on the right track. The surreal part was just seeing people like Daemon Hatfield, Peer Schneider and others who, to me, had only existed as voices on the internet, become real. Personally, that was far more interesting than watching Dead Island/zombie Fallout being played in their pimped out demo room.

bad pic of the game library

There were about twenty of of us on the trip but apparently there were over fifty applicants so I guess we were the special ones. However, while I do feel really bad saying this because I have absolutely no right to judge, some of the kinds of gamers who like IGN enough to visit it aren't people I would particularly like to hang around with. HYPOCRISY!

bottom left, Mark Ryan Sallee and Colin Moriarty

But whatever. It was still awesome. I won a copy of Total War Shogun 2 for knowing that the most overrated console of all time, the Sega Dreamcast, came out on 9/9/99. I told IGN Playstation Executive Editor and Mizzou journalism school alumnus Greg Miller (the dude hugging me in the opening pic) that I went to Medill and he said stuff I won't repeat. Their director of Tech Ops, Chris Ostertag, is also from New Jersey and went to Northwestern so I feel I'm still in the right. Plus, HD Starcraft, one of the few Starcraft commentators watch, was there too so that was neat and unexpected.

Now I just have to make the switch from tourist to employee.

They have this now though so I'm all good

And I'm Off

2011-08-29T09:14:00.000-05:00

So after surviving and incredibly mild east coast earthquake and a not-so-mild hurricane/power outage, tomorrow I'm headed off to San Francisco before returning for part 2 of Northwestern University. I might try to write something while out there, hopefully about my trip to the IGN offices and the subsequent skyrocketing of my games journalism career, but in the meantime go watch stuff on Homestar Runner. Almost forgot how amazing that stuff is.

Stuff I Did This Week- 8/26/2011

2011-08-26T11:00:00.001-05:00

What with my slowly increasing internet presence, it's time for the first installment of Stuff I Did This Week

I made an iPhone game. U jelly.

Surviving High School HD Gives Us a Second Chance at Popularity

Toaster Pop, a Game by a 7-Year-Old

Steve Jobs Resigns as Apple CEO

Fractal: Make Blooms Not War Review

Japanese Film Company Releases Pair of Production Apps

Roadshow Brings Offline Web Video Viewing to iPad

game JOURNALISM!

New Job and Apple Products

2011-08-22T14:18:00.001-05:00

Big update! I've got a new (hopefully) ongoing paid gig over at 148apps.com writing various kinds of articles about iPad games. You can read my first post here. That means part one of my two part plan to do way more game journalism this fall is working out.

That also means I'll have less time for original stuff here, hence my preemptive slowing down to one post a week. What I hope to do is put up one new, silly kind of exclusive article here every week and also do a weekly wrap-up to all my other internet activities going on. Also, if you want straight, pure and insane insights into my thoughts in short digestible form you can follow me on twitter for stuff like "had a dream David Duchovny was Iron Man. He wasn't very good."

One more thing. Some dudes I know just launched their awesomely named entertainment/sports blog Bon Iverson today and you should totally check it out.

I also think this would be a good time to just share some of my thoughts on Apple products in general. After the jump...

These commercials are the worst form of Apple smugness

I like to think that my tech lifestyle is quite well-rounded. I have an HP laptop running Windows, numerous Nintendo game consoles, an Android phone by HTC on Verizon, an iPod touch and now an iPad 2 and I enjoy all my products thoroughly. So while I have never been ideologically opposed to Apple products, I've also never been their biggest champion. Part of it was because while the various iOS devices are cool, I've always viewed as Macs themselves to be for people who are willing to give away some of the freedom, and extra money, to mess around with their computers in exchange for stability. I understand that but that's not who I am. There's something satisfying to me about conquering the challenges of a PC. Also, I'm not a video professional and therefore have no need for Final Cut.

With the iPad though, I struggled to see why anyone would need it. Yo dog do you want a big phone that can't call people? How about a really stripped down laptop. Sure tablets are neat luxury items and I wanted one but I couldn't justify it. Saying it was journalistic purposes wasn't going to cut it despite how much my professors praise this device. They are in this no man's land where they are aware of new tech but aren't jaded enough to recognize when it's flawed. Eventually though I just stopped trying and decided to accept the hypocrisy and buy one anyway with the hope of landing a job like this.

Surprisingly enough, I've found more practical use for the thing then I would've thought. I've mentioned earlier how a larger touch display makes an all-touch gaming device more feasibly but, with properly designed apps, all the productivity apps like Pages and iMovie and Keynote are also far more capable than I ever would've considered. In fact, I wrote the majority of this post in my bed in the Notes app.

The way I see it, my big and powerful desktop replacement laptop is too busy being a desktop to be a laptop. So in that sense my iPad's purpose is to be a laptop replacement. Having five times as much battery life certainly helps.

Smart covers are neat too.

What's on the TV these days?

2011-08-20T20:06:00.000-05:00

Ever since "Avatar: The Last Airbender" ended I’ve found myself unable to commit to another serialized TV show. As such, Netflix and the internet at large are my avenues for things like "Mad Men,""Game of Thrones" and "The Walking Dead." The few times I’m actually watching a television program on a television is for stuff like "The Daily Show" or one of the Matt Groening/Seth Macfarlane family of cartoons despite how bad they have become with the exception of Futurama. So naturally I’ve decided to use my blog to discuss and dismiss the current state of a media landscape I know very little about.

Today’s theme: Cats and Dogs. If I only I had thought to do this when they put out a sequel to Cats and Dogs nine years later for no reason whatsoever.

First up, “The Nine Lives of Chloe King”

Skyler is the second worst name, right behind Kyler.

So it’s about, like, a superpowered cat lady? And like the savior of all the other San Francisco cat ladies? The cat lady has nine lives so maybe the big thing will be she gets killed at the end of each episode. That’d make for a pretty interesting miniseries. If they’re really ambitious though, they’ll go for a death at the end of each season. It’ll totally last until then.

Also, if a cat lady gets with a human dude the dude dies. So there’s all this tension. It’s like "Pushing Daisies." Actually, if anything, this reminds of me "Dark Angel," that show James Cameron made a few years ago starring Jessica Alba as another superpowered cat lady. Except, it’s on ABC Family so less darkness and more, I don’t know, teen angst?

Speaking of teen angst, if I may once again make sweeping generalizations about something I don’t know about, teen angst, vampires, and my home state seem to be what dominates the airwaves. Stupid kids.

Take the new "Teen Wolf" show for example. The original Teen Wolf movies were about werewolf Michael J. Fox, and eventually werewolf Jason Bateman, bro-ing it up, playing basketball, turning into a wolves and generally having a radical 1980s life. If you want a true successor to that go watch "Big Wolf on Campus" because that show was great. Also, "Big Bad Beetleborgs." (not related)

This new one though is all about mist, and brooding and lacrosse. It is chillingly accurate depiction of the age we live in. You know what though. Scott’s friend is still named Stiles. That is all kinds of perfect.

Finally, werewolves…full moon. This is the best chance I’ll get to bring up one of my favorite, short-lived high-concept TV shows no one should remember, “Three Moons Over Milford.” Basically, an asteroid hits the moon and NOW THERE ARE THREE MOONS that could fall to the Earth at any time and kill everyone. So people just start going nuts and start like looting, or being super skeezy, or just pretending that nothing is wrong. It only had eight episodes presumably because that’s when the three moons killed everyone.

WHERE CAN I BUY THE RIGHTS TO THIS?

Old Stuff: High School Newspaper edition

2011-08-15T02:39:00.002-05:00

That last post was weird and awesome but a little light on real content. So here's a nice big chunk of my nostalgia to help make up for it. Basically I decided to scan all the articles I wrote for my high school newspaper The Braggin' Dragon. We were the Kingsway Dragons you see. Kingsway Regional High School. South Jersey is a weird place. It's like the New Jersey everyone thinks they know about but with less New York and more Philadelphia therefore water ice.

Anyone these articles were written during my sophomore, junior and senior years (before all the fancy Medill training) where I rose from simple staff writer to both entertainment and opinions editor.

Enjoy the articles. (and my hands which were occasionally needed for optimal memory preserving)

ESPECIALLY YOU KEN ICHIJOUJI

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Interview with a student beekeeper

Cloverfield movie review

Opinion piece on 2008 presidential debate

Opinion piece to lower the drinking age

Watchmen movie review part 1

Watchmen movie review part 2

District 9 movie review

Article about Oliver Stone's movies about presidents

Profile on two tennis players

Article about the 2007-2008 writer's strike

Opinion piece about how dumb 3D movies are. Sound familiar?

Opinion piece on Hollywood remakes

A very nice piece the paper's adviser wrote about me and all the other editors who were graduating

The paper's mission statement which also lists my positions

Mind Dump 6- The White Shark Trilogy

2011-08-13T16:35:00.001-05:00

I said in the very first mind dump that I think the idea of a “greatest white shark” has potential to be a movie. After all, if something like Shark Night 3D can exist, why not bring some more high concept elements to the “shark attack” subgenre of horror movies. Without Deep Blue Sea, no one would’ve known that sharks that can swim backwards are super smart and/or able to kill Sam Jackson.

So after thinking about this for way longer than necessary, I’ve imagined out not one, but a trilogy of movies(?) based around this concept that I would like to share with you now.

Part 1- The Great White Shark
Guess what? There’s a great white shark and he terrorizes a coastal town or something. This initial chapter is more about getting the audience to accept the idea that the titular shark is the protagonist, not Richard Dreyfuss or whoever.

Part 2- The Greater White Shark
One day the great white shark is just minding his own business when THE GREATER WHITE SHARK shows up to like, I don’t know, terrorize the town thereby encroaching on the great white shark’s turf. They fight and the great white shark manages to repel the greater white shark despite what their names would suggest, but the two form an everlasting grudge. SHARK ON SHARK VIOLENCE!

Part 3- The Greatest White Shark
However, the mortal enemies the great white shark and the greater white shark are forced to put aside their hatred for this, the final installment. When the all-powerful and honorless GREATEST WHITE SHARK arrives to kill everyone and everything, only the combined efforts of the great white shark and the greater white shark have a chance at stopping him. Also, since Dracula is in the public domain, the greatest white shark is also known in some circles as Underwater Dracula. Also, also to cut down on the budget you shoot this one back-to-back with The Greater White Shark a la The Matrix sequels.

Of course there would be all these life metaphors and social commentaries throughout for those who want something more with their shark carnage. But for the rest of us, there is plenty of shark carnage.

Maybe the Discovery Channel will play it during shark week?

YOU’RE WELCOME ALEXANDRE AJA

next time, an octopus

not to be confused with The White Dog Trilogy. No racism here. Just sharks

So I Saw Rise of the Planet of the Apes

2011-08-07T20:17:00.002-05:00

More internet notoriety! This website that sells shirts with pop-culture stuff on them hired me to write some descriptions for them. The bottom paragraphs is mine. Now you too can know what the heck “How to Make it in America” is about.

This is the last major movie I planned on seeing this summer so luckily it’s pretty good.

Quick plot synopsis: So there are like all these earthquakes happening and no one knows why and it starts off as like a disaster movie. Suddenly, a whole entire, other planet filled with hyper-intelligent chimps rises out of the Earth’s crust hence the title The Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Okay no, it’s actually about the metaphorical rise of hyper-intelligent chimps led by the revolutionary Caesar, (Andy Serkis a.k.a. Gollum cannot get enough praise for his motion capture performance) paving the way for a new Planet of the Apes series since the original five circle back on themselves and the Tim Burton remake is just awful, even though I don’t quite remember it being that awful. Probably because I went as Tim Roth's villainous chimp general for Halloween in 3rd grade.

At first I was a little disappointed to hear the apes were all CGI since the one thing the remake had going for it was spectacular make-up. But by that point the apes had evolved to these humanoid things. Here they’re just straight-up apes so it makes since. Also, the work WETA has created here easily rivals what Rick Baker did for that film in terms of immaculate attention to detail. The fact that an all CGI character is so expressive and relatable that he is essentially the star of the movie is a triumph for the medium. It opens up a boatload of new possibilities like say a Transformers movie with no humans. The body language and facial expression remind me of WALL-E in a way.

This happens

Also, for a movie that sets up the downfall of humanity it doesn’t end with the sense of doom you might expect. Still, the idea of a super smart chimp with a knife is moderately horrifying, and on horseback no less. Also, even though there is only gorilla and one orangutan they’re each kind of a big deal. It’s one of several, subtle but appreciated callbacks to the original movies. Yeah all the nuclear war stuff got dropped in favor of animal testing and whatnot but it’s not preachy and the drama works. The end action is more like a bonus.

For those of you like me who realize that guns>monkeys, the film smartly sidesteps this by giving both sides a reason to avoid outright murdering each other. Plus the apes only really fight a group of cops on a bridge, not the army. San Francisco cops at that.

The human cast is fine but not really the point. John Lithgow is touching while Freida Pinto is aggressively unnecessary. David Oyelowo’s whole dialogue is basically, “money, money, money” and Draco Malfoy is in it as a villain because what else.

BUT! What you really want to know is HOW STONED AND/OR WEIRDLY IRONIC AND AWESOME AND HILARIOUS IS JAMES FRANCO THE WORLD’S BEST ACTOR?

Sorry to say it but he’s basically playing it straight. And not even like so straight that it turns back into bizarre irony. He’s just playing a scientist. As a firm believer that his performance at the 2011 Oscars was by far the most entertaining thing the show has ever done, I found this disappointing.

Studied at Columbia and Yale

Oh well, I’ll just wait for his documentary about his making of a play about himself making a play.

So I Saw Captain America...

2011-08-02T00:21:00.001-05:00

Okay, so the plan now is to try for one or two new posts a week. I've got enough ideas to keep that up. also here's a link to a thing I wrote for this site called JoeCrazy.com. The Top 5 Weirdest Fighting Game Crossovers

The best thing about this great movie is that it feels complete. Like the war movies Captain America: The First Avenger is emulating, its story is epic in scope. It makes sense when you consider how long it would take a vaguely impotent weakling like Steve Rogers to not only become Captain America but also wage this whole secret war against Hugo Weaving and German Karl Rove/Toby Jones’s alternate Nazis. It tells the saga of this man and his legacy as a symbol which is exactly what a Captain America movie should be. And all of the comic trappings will just help it dissociate itself from any of the real-world political stuff that would threaten to bring it down. It’s fun, action-packed, sweet, tragic, nostalgic and dignified. Unfortunately for Marvel, that feeling of completeness, for me, would render any sequel unnecessary at best and a cheapening of the franchise at worst. At least, if they were set in WWII again.

Some other random thoughts

The cast is great from snark-free Chris Evans to “sure why not I’ll be in this” people like Stanley Tucci and Tommy Lee Jones.

The Cosmic Cube is a suitable stand-in for the Ark of the Covenant as part of the film’s whole Indiana Jones homage.

How crazy is it that there are comics about a character in the universe where said comic character actually exists?

X-Men: First Class is good but maybe this is the best superhero movie of the Summer?

The whole patriotism thing is never obnoxious and conversely the multiethnic soldier stuff never feels like politically correct pandering.

There’s one great bit of kind of insane ultra-violence.

It's got great stuff like this

Making Bucky an adult was a good move. Superhero child sidekicks don’t make any sense except in Kick-Ass kind of stuff where they acknowledge how messed up the whole situation is.

Howard Stark is fine but he outstays his welcome as if to say, “Hey you guys like Iron Man right? Well here’s his dad. CLOSE-UP ON STARK INDUSTRIES LOGO!”

Actually, once again it’s the shared universe nonsense that’s the worst part of this movie. There’s just so little of it this time fortunately that it doesn’t noticeably detract and most probably won’t even notice.

Also, 3D continues to be dumb. I actually had to break my “no 3D movie” streak for this one and all I got was a lighter wallet and unwanted shields coming at my face.

Thor Kirby (courtesy of a friend of mine) sayeth, "Your move Whedon"

New Posts

2011-07-26T14:11:00.000-05:00

Thanks in part to this blog, I've been able to get a few writing gigs set up. Unfortunately that means new posts here might slow down a bit. Don't worry though, once this stuff I'm working on starts hitting the web, you guys will be the first to know.

Also, Captain America is really good go see it. Hopefully I'll have a chance soon to tell you why.

So I saw Harry Potter part 7 part 2...

2011-07-24T15:41:00.002-05:00

Turns out it’s more than a Batman trailer.

I saw it late because I figured I could help it out considering it dropped 72% over last weekend.

The Harry Potter phenomenon is so freaking huge that what is there really left to say about it? I liked this movie. It was good. It was as visually beautiful as the last few but stuff actually happened. Did it feel kind of abbreviated? Yeah but that problem is similar to how the last one was all build up. If you watch them together it’ll probably be fine, although Warner also could’ve just sacrificed their extra billion dollars by making like a single three and a half movie instead.

...horses...and alcohol

But after over a decade, seven books, and eight movies worth of this, my biggest takeaway remains that this series has always been in constant need of an editor. There’s great stuff here. The first one is a fine adaptation of when the series still considered itself to just be children’s literature. The third movie is amazing and has such a unique plot structure. The ending of the fourth one is a dark, incredibly well-executed, heart-breaking sequence. Even this one, in-between the spectacle, has time for masterfully done segments like Snape’s memory sequence.

However, for all the good you get, and it is a lot, you’ll also get hours/thousands of filler pages where literally nothing happening, also known as Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Now I understand that my preference of tight, moving plot over meandering character meditation is an extremely personal one. It’s definitely not something all authors and filmmakers should consider when crafting their art. Still, I maintain that if Rowling kept books 1, 3, parts of 4, and 7 and maybe condensed the rest of the necessary plot into one more book, this slightly padded series might’ve been better off. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2 is an amazing grand finale that leaves quite an impact. But going into it I couldn’t help but notice a bit of fatigue hiding inside my excitement. I like this franchise. I really do. And yet, after coming out, I’m just kind of relieved to finally be able to stop thinking about the whole thing.

Voldermort’s hugs, laughs, and emasculation of Malfoy is pretty good too.

Also, between this, the trailer for The Dark Knight Rises, and Kung-Fu Panda 2 of all things, this has been one pretty good summer of Gary Oldman. Really, he’s plays an evil peacock in Kung-Fu Panda 2 and he’s the best part. What?

3D? No

On Phone Gaming

2011-07-21T20:10:00.003-05:00

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now so I figure I should write it down somewhere. So sales of the 3DS have been softer than expected. Some are using that as the first major sign that as smartphones like the iPhone become more and more capable game devices they will take over the handheld market because, you know, everyone will have a phone.

Also, download-only marketplaces like the app store give developers more opportunities to put out more games and more riskier games since they don’t have to worry about supplying retailers with boxes full of expensive cartridges. However, the stuff that dominates the app store is still the same populist stuff that would probably also sell well on cartridges or discs. Anyone remember a game called Boom Blox? It was a casual Wii game that sold pretty well and was pretty awesome. The gameplay was also basically Angry Birds in 3D crossed with Jenga.

Despite valiant attempts like Nintendo’s eShop and the upcoming Playstation Vita’s ability to download games, the app store and services like it have a lot of that market cornered due to the quality of their design (although not necessarily their quality of games) and their sheer ubiquity.

It's fun, I guess

So are the phones going to destroy the handhelds? Maybe. Is that good? Maybe.

Here’s the thing, I absolutely love the download-only model. The whole point of handheld gaming is gaming on the go and digital distribution is a far more conveniently way to get the games on the devices anywhere that has a connection. It also means you always have the all the games with you.

The Sony Xperia Play. I'm really interested in knowing how well it's doing

However, I don’t like the idea of the gaming hardware being controlled by people who don’t really care about games. That includes non-discerning customers just looking to kill time as well as the big tech companies that view gaming as another box to check off on their smartphone’s feature-set. Sony and Micosoft may not be primarily game developers but at least they do real game development unlike Apple or Google. But if all the major publishers move over than they’ll bring enough quality software with them to hopefully offset this.

What they can’t offset is the design of the hardware itself. An all touch-screen interface is intuitive, non-threatening and really elegant…for a phone. It simply does not work though for all kinds of games and if phones are going to be the primary way of playing handheld games they’re going to need to work with all kinds of games. Honestly, if phones just had like a d-pad and a few buttons, I would be so on board with them being the future because of all their other positives. But right now so many phone games are so hamstrung by the control limitations, despite how good they look their playability is too compromised. And trust me I’ve played a fair amount of iPhone games for extended periods of time.

In understand though why companies are hesitant to add game controls to their phones. It would clash with their sleek form factors and possibly scare off consumers. I just want the future of gaming to be bright for everyone.

As a side note, the bigger screen of the iPad makes touch-only gaming slightly more feasibly I guess, no fingers obscuring the view, but then it’s competing less with handhelds and more with PCs and consoles and that’s a whole other topic.

Another side note, I find it interesting that it was the iPhone that seemed to start this whole debate. Cell phones had throwaway download games way before that thing came out but it’s funny that only once Apple got involved did it become a topic with discussing. For fairness sake though I’ll chalk that up to advancing hardware rather than blind, brand worship.

The future

But don’t worry, it’ll all be fine once the Nintendo phone comes out.

Something to say? Comment below. Also now follow me on Twitter for new thoughts too strange and/or thin to fill a whole blog post like “had a dream where replacing an ink cartridge with bbq sauce allowed one to print burgers”

Comic cartoons and the movies they exist solely to promote

2011-07-17T21:18:00.004-05:00

This summer saw the release of a lot of comic movies (and there are still more coming) and you know what that means, cartoons based on comics designed for coasting on the new found popularity the movies bring to a franchise.

Now while making cheap cash-in children’s cartoons based on movies is nothing new (see Beetlejuice, Ace Ventura and… Robocop) with comics it’s a little different. Because so many comic book movies come out and get sequels, I’ve noticed this strange phenomenon where a series will get created to follow-up on one movie, go through its run, and end before the next sequel comes out which then requires another series be made.

For example, after the first Spider-Man movie came out there was that CG-show they made starring good ole NPH (Neil Patrick Harris for... you people) but it got cancelled before even the release of Spider-Man 2 two years later. Fast-forward to the spring after Spider-Man 3 for a new show, “The Spectacular Spider-Man.” I heard it was good but due to that whole Disney buying Marvel business it got shut down a year and a half later. Now we’ve got another show coming, “Ultimate Spider-Man,” just in time for The Amazing Spider-Man in theaters next summer.

This picture is relevant enough, right?

Some stuff manages to last longer. “X-Men Evolution” managed to span the entire three years between the first two X-Men movies, although “Wolverine and the X-Men” suffered a fate not unlike “Spectacular Spider-Man.”

Then there’s Batman. His magnificent animated series began after 1992’s Batman Returns but the glorious DC Animated Universe it inspired lasted all the way until 2006. However, as for Batman himself even he could not escape the cycle. Batman Begins spawned “The Batman” and, despite their harsh differences in tone, “Batman: The Brave and the Bold” premiered the fall after the release of The Dark Knight. And with that show's end it sight, there are already plans for a post-The Dark Knight Rises series.

Heck, this really applies to all long-running geeky properties. To once again bring things back to Transformers check out this timeline.

Transformers (film) 2007
Transformers Animated (tv series) 2007-2009
Transformers Revenge of the Fallen (film) 2009
Transformers: Prime (tv series) 2010
Transformers Dark of the Moon (film) 2011

Now I'm not saying these shows are bad. Again "Batman: The Animated Series" is phenomenal and many of the other shows I mentioned are at least decent. It's just the way they're positioned that's weird/funny/shameless.

Wouldn’t be neat if we started seeing more stuff like "Jimmy Neutron" where the movie was a glorified ad for the show instead of kind of the other way around?

Or how neat would it be if we got this?

Alan Moore you so crazy

Also, while I’m thinking about Spider-Man what with all the info on the new movie coming out, mechanical web-shooters are and have also been stupid. I don’t care that his suit looks like a basketball but the web-shooters bug (heh) me. Yeah it isn’t a huge deal, yeah it’s truer to the comics and yeah it shows how smart Peter is. However, despite how crazy Spider-Man may be, I find the idea that someone can get bit by a super-powered spider, get a whole host of spider-related powers but then have to build some gadget in order to shoot his limited amount of web absolutely ridiculous. Yes, even more ridiculous than '60s and Italian Spider-Man.

But yeah, how 'bout that pan-media.

Why Do I Own This?: Pearl Harbor Poster

2011-07-13T23:23:00.002-05:00

Man, I can stop bringing things back to Transformers.

So Giant Bomb has this weekly live show for subscribers and one of the segments allows viewers to call in and answer trivia for prizes. When Dark of the Moon came out the theme was Transformers and because I know too much about that franchise I called in and won.

My prize? A high-quality poster of a terrible movie: Pearl Harbor directed by Michael Bay who also directed Transformers.

It's the translucent kind theaters use so they "pop" more in the back lit display cases.So that's two movie posters I've acquired over the past few months, the first being this poster of The Room that I got signed by Tommy Wiseau,who also harassed me, when he hosted a screening in Chicago. That was way better than being on Slimetime Live or meeting Stephen Colbert. If you love ironically bad movies and haven't seen The Room fix that. It's impossible to spoil because every scene is magical.


"Jordan, may all your dreams come true. Love- Tommy"

But that's a poster I'll cherish forever. The Pearl Harbor one...

Octodad 2 and more games you should support

2011-07-11T22:05:00.001-05:00

When I interviewed the developers of cult-hit DePaul student game Octodad a few months ago they hinted that we hadn’t seen the last of our favorite sea creature what pretends to be a father.

Well the time for hinting is over. Octodad 2 is happening but it needs your help. Follow this link to donate to the project and get some neat stuff in return like t-shirts, pre-orders, or my favorite, virtual high fives. And if you need a reminder of how it’s your civic duty to support this sequel, go download the original for free and give it a shot.

Thanks to Sam for this tip.

It’s worth mentioning here that you should probably also check out Operation Rainfall, a underground movement dedicated to bringing three cool-looking Wii RPGs (Xenoblade, Pandora’s Tower and The Last Story from the creator of Final Fantasy) over to America, Europe is already getting them, since the system is in such need of content. So far their results have been pretty impressive not the least of which being pushing one of those games, Xenoblade, to the top of the Amazon video game charts.

Here’s hoping that if they succeed the games won’t sell like garbage because if they do Nintendo will never pay attention to internet fans ever again.

So yeah support Octodad 2 and support Operation Rainfall. They’re pretty cool.

G Gundam Abridged Episode 1

2011-07-09T14:26:00.004-05:00

Making an abridged series, for those of you who don't know, is the process of taking a show, usually an anime, editing it down and dubbing over the dialogue for comedic effect. The most famous of these is probably Yu-Gi-Oh The Abriged Series.

Anyway, a good friend of mine, known on Youtube as "TheHolyEpic" decided to get in on the action and make his own abridged series based on "Mobile Fighter G Gundam" (fighting robots). He collected the footage, edited it, and did the voices. But being the egotist that I am I've decided to post it here not simply out of selfless desire to promote my friend's material but also because I helped write the script.

Seriously though he did a good job. Check it out

Also, despite my feelings on Twitter, I do feel "obligated" (get it) to remind you guys that I do have one and It'd be cool if you followed @JordanWMinor

Hint: the W makes me more like Batman

Alien vs. Predator… vs. Starcraft vs. Game of Thrones

2011-07-07T22:08:00.002-05:00

After that Transformers-fueled negative tirade, let’s talk about something do I like. This post is about three things I like actually and some of the amusing and surprising similarities between them: Starcraft (it bears repeating every time, an amazing PC real-time strategy game and one of my favorite games ever), the Alien vs. Predator franchise, and the show/book Game of Thrones which just ended its first season on HBO.

Now I’m not saying anyone ripped anyone else off. Everyone is inspired by something and sometimes those influences are shared. Besides Starcraft was released in 1998, “A Game of Thrones”, the first book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series and basis for the first season of “Game of Thrones” was released in 1996 and the Alien and Predator franchises have been around for so long that it’s safe to call most references to them “homages” rather than plagiarism.

However, despite their drastic differences, AVP’s approach to sci-fi is much more horrific than Starcraft’s while the low-fantasy Game of Thrones is in an entirely different genre, there are broad-level similarities and even a few micro-level ones I felt it would be fun to point out.

Mainly, each series as has three intertwining but fairly distinct components. AVP has Aliens, Predators, and Space Marines. Starcraft has the Zerg, Protoss and Terrans. Game of Thrones has far more than three factions but its plot roughly follows three groups of characters: Daenerys Targaryen and her Dothraki horde, the families competing for the Iron Throne, and the men of the Night's Watch protecting the continent from what’s north of the wall. These groups line up in some interesting ways.

Aliens/Zerg/Daenerys

The Alien (xenomorph) and Zerg similarities should be obvious. They are both these marauding, animalistic alien swarms that all agree are a menace to their respective universes. They are both vaguely insectoid, living in hive-like civilizations with queens and use infestation as a means of attack. Individual members of the species also don’t have much initiative of their own besides to propagate and destroy on behalf of their queen.

Xenomorphs

Kerrigan

Daenerys

One thing that sets the Aliens apart from the Zerg is the presence of Sarah Kerrigan, the half-human half-zerg psychic queen of the swarm and major antagonist of the franchise. Kerrigan also has a few similarities with Daenerys Targaryen from “Game of Thrones.” Both were abandoned from their homelands and given over to savage, foreign enemy tribes, the Zerg and the Dothraki, only to be strengthened by the experience and become all-powerful singular leaders within their groups. They both have a powerful ability that only they seem able to control, Kerrigan’s psychic powers and Daenerys’s dragons, and (without getting into spoilers) both are using their growing hordes to conquer and seek to reclaim the land they feel is owed them.

Space Marines/Terrans/Seven Kingdoms

Once again it’s easy to see the Starcraft and AVP parallels. The Terrans and the Space Marines, sorry the “United States Colonial Marine Corps”, are both groups of humans trying to thrive in a harsh universe they are new to. Heck, the Terran infantry are called marines, and they are in space. The Aliens franchise was where the whole space marine concept really took off and Starcraft is hardly the only game to look at it for inspiration.

Now the different houses of the Seven Kingdoms in Game of Thrones may not be fighting aliens, or even some fantasy analogue like orcs or something, but like the Terrans they are mired in politics so cutthroat they’ll probably destroy themselves before anyone else can. Power is constantly shifting in both Westeros and the Terran Dominion and usually people are just lesser evils rather than good. Compare Jim Raynor and Ned Stark. Both helped in rebellions that led to rulers being overthrown and replaced by their friends only to have the new regime turn on them. King Robert Baratheon may not be as bad as Emperor Arcturus Mengsk but his “son” Joffrey sure is. Plus he’s got Valerian Mengsk’s smugness.

Ned Stark

This is Jimmy

Predators/Protoss/Night’s Watch

I’ve always described the Protoss from Starcraft as “Predators that had found religion.” Both are ancient, powerful civilizations with a penchant for pyramids and have technology advanced enough that a single Protoss or Predator could easily take down many Terrans, Zerg, Aliens or Marines. However, while they both have highly ritualistic tribal cultures, the Predators' sense of honor is ruthless and they exist only for the hunt. Protoss on the other hand have a warrior culture as spiritual as it is militaristic. Do you know why they always must “construct additional pylons?” It’s to maintain the crystal-based psionic energy matrix that powers the race.

At first it seems linking these two races to the Night’s Watch is kind of ludicrous and I’ll admit, the Game of Thrones connection here is a little weak compared to the other two. However, while these groups themselves may not be all that similar aside from maybe a strong yet detached sense of honor and morality, their roles within the respective stories do have some things in common.

The Night’s Watch exists to protect the continent of Westeros from what’s north of the wall. They are above the petty infighting that plagues the Seven Kingdoms and seeing as the Dothraki are across the narrow sea from Westeros they aren’t a big concern either. The Night’s Watch is about recognizing the larger threat and seeing the bigger picture. Again, not to spoil Starcraft 2 (part 1), but the Protoss’s role in that story is very similar in that they are mostly unconcerned with the other two factions and are instead investigating are much larger looming disaster. As for the Predators, hey they’re willing to team up with humans against Aliens when the time calls for it so they can recognize a mutual threat too. Again, this connection is a little shakier but you gotta try right?

So there you go. A fun thought exercise and exploration of hidden connections that exists only because I just finished watching Game of Thrones and wanted to write something about it besides “I like it.”

Next time we’ll look at the ties between Game of Thrones, Arrested Development,(just finished watching that too and appreciating how amazing it is) and Iron Man.

I don’t play Dungeons and Dragons

“Runaway” from Transformers: Dark of the Moon

2011-07-04T14:20:00.006-05:00

The title is referring to what you think

Happy Fourth of July! My "review" of the latest installment of this cinematic ordeal known as the Transformers franchise is after the jump. I use quotes because this is more of a structured rant that's been building for four years as opposed to a more objective assessment. If you really want to know if you should see this or not you'll find more useful pieces elsewhere on the internet.

But first I just wanted to share this video I’ve created that far better encapsulates my feelings, particularly towards the creators of these things, through images and music rather than the following absurd amount of written text.

Enjoy

Let’s have a toast for these people indeed because we have been putting up with this for way too long.

I don’t even know where to begin. It’s going to take some restraint to keep this focused on why just this movie sucks as opposed to all three of them.

First of all, in all honesty much of the material that has come from the Transformers franchise has never been great because let’s face it, it was a toy commercial and one for toys around during the Reagan era no less. Perhaps it’s appropriate for them to be re-purposed into loud, meaningless army movies at heart.

You don't deserve to wear that hat

But there have always been, I’ve felt anyway, enough interesting ideas, plot threads, character premises that someone talented could weave into an entertaining and quality piece of fiction. Last year’s game Transformers: War for Cybertron is testament to that. At this point I say abandon live-action and just do an all CGI-animated movie set on Cybertron. It’d probably be cheaper, although less profitable. Just make the Transformers movie that’s actually about the Transformers.

But Michael Bay has shown three times now that he simply does not want to make that movie. There are plenty of other movies he wants to make. Dark of the Moon starts as a lame conspiracy movie and ends as a boisterous military action movie. It’s as long as two movies too. It’s just disappointing that neither of those movies are really Transformers movies, or just good for that matter.

No it’s not as weirdly offensive or obviously script-deficient as the painfully awful, aggressively meaningless and equally long 2009 release Revenge of the Fallen. Dark stuff is actually kind of going on and the terrible, terrible homophobic (Ken Jeong, Alan Tudyk) and childish (Wheelie) comedy is at least dialed down to almost tolerable levels.

However, just because it’s not as bad as one of the worst things ever shouldn’t mean that it’s even remotely acceptable. As I was watching this nonsense unfold with my hands in the air, surrendering, all I had were questions like:

Just who do you think you are?

Why is Shia LaBeouf so annoying and so the worst and yet keeps getting ridiculously high-profile roles? You understand? He keeps repeating that but I still don’t.

If Megatron was in the Hoover Dam for like a hundred years why is the big twist that Transformers have been on the Moon since the 60s news to the government?

Why wasn’t the Fallen, the Decepticon master who was killed last time, not aware of this plan?
What was anyone’s plan or motivation at any point in time? Also, where were they?

Why do the robots still look like garbage and how depressing is it that people now think this is what the Transformers look like?

Why does Megatron have a terrorist headscarf? And why is he an idiot? Is it because he only has half a face?

Since when is Optimus “flame decals” Prime like this jerk, Neo-Con “no cutting and running” guy for their bizarre war allegories? And also, when did he start sucking at leading the Autobots? What happened to the robot Jesus that keeps dying and coming back in pretty much any Transformers property? And where was he during the majority of the end battle sequence? Why I am watching these random army guys I don’t care at all about and not the Transformers in Transformers?
Why are so many weird political digs in this movie anyway?

When did Soundwave go from a satellite to a Mercedes?

Why is Shockwave in this movie for literally no reason and why are the rest of the Decepticons just these little gremlins and nameless goons with dreadlocks and/or tentacles?

If you’re going to have an antagonistic planet why not just use Unicron?

Since when do the Autobots have hair and Einstein faces and potbellies with logos for Target on them?

Why is the subtitle the dumbest thing since "Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark"?

Why is John Malkovich in this? And why is there this whole metaphor about getting a job? I guess to complete the “become a man” arc after getting the high school girl and going to college. That’s what these Transformers movies are really about, a boy transforming into a man. Not at all about robots transforming into cars.

Why do human beings, like Frances McDormand, think that they have any power to tell the giant, ancient robots what to do? Why are all they so arrogant and awful and annoying that I actually want the villains to just kill them all and restore the robot planet we get a glimpse of in the beginning? Why I am sympathizing for and offended on behalf of the evil Decepticons?

Why do they show the real Kennedy during their alternate space race cold opening only to hire the worst look-a-like ever? It’s the same with Obama. Maybe it’s because “we’re all Republicans here”(actual quote for the movie).

At least the trailer was neat

Here are some positives for fairness sake. The use of Laserbeak is surprisingly good. Patrick Dempsey’s role is ludicrous but kind of oddly fun. You could tell it was shot for 3D so I assume the 3D looks good, although I didn’t see it in 3D because 3D still sucks. Plus, I don’t care how cool 3D base-jumping looks in a giant robot movie. It’s a giant robot movie so show me that instead of trying to distract me from bad your movie is.

Finally, I actually like this new girl better and not just because she’s British or for some of the specific camera angles. There’s nothing to her at all but she comes off as a nicer person in real life that Megan Fox ever did.

But here we are again with this same problems. The robots are too faceless, overly-designed, and visually incoherent while fighting for any audience to care about them. So instead of the alien robot civil war with far more potential for a unique, compelling narrative I’m stuck being forced to care about these empty, plain old human beings. That apocalyptic Chicago end sequence people keep “raving” about? It’s just Battle: LA but set in Chicago and with a bigger budget. At least Battle: LA didn’t have to pay lip-service to some other franchise it was pretending to be a part of while reveling in its military fetishism.

Transformers don’t have to be pointy scrap metal piles of CGI void and absolute nothingness. They can have recognizable faces and personalities worth following and rooting for to the point where their deaths can be meaningful instead of non-events. They can be more than just explosions and accents to be pushed aside by John Duhamel in a flight suit or Shia LaBeouf getting felt up in a bathroom.

Just look at how much more relatable this thing is based on eyes alone

Movies like Avatar, which I think is meh, and District 9, which I think is great, confirm to me that it’s possible to make alien movies with military elements where the aliens themselves are characters that can emote. Audiences can accept wholly computer-animated worlds as real and its inhabitants as dignified creatures, not merely these faceless things that get shot down as we fulfill our “noble” agendas. I’m not saying every movies needs to be this hippie love-in, but the dehumanization of the enemy in these movies is such a horrible message to send. Conflict is complex and all of its angles need to be explored.

And the fact that I’m even having these thoughts is indicative of one, my mind, and two, how much Michael Bay has completely missed the points with these movies. Dumb fun is fine but there is a difference between a dumb fun movie where alien robots fight and a dumb movie where a person I hate interacts with other annoying people unnecessarily for ninety minutes and then army guys shoot for an hour while robots occasionally fight in the background. That second movie is not a Transformers movie. Many people may not see the difference there but I do. A more robot-centric movie might not even be good, but it’d be an experiment worth trying rather than falling back onto this admittedly well-constructed but utterly soulless action movie that sometimes features robots. That movie definitely is not good.

We should have standards for everything. Even things as dumb as “robots what turn into stuff.”

Bonus Section- The Star Trek Connection

So Leonard Nimoy voices Sentinel Prime in a movie, which could’ve been neat if he had anything to do, and naturally there is a Star Trek reference, a pretty clever one at that, but it got me to thinking about the new Star Trek movie, written by the previous Transformers writers at that, and how I like and dislike it at the same time.

I’ve never liked Star Trek, the TV series at least. And this movie struck me as them trying to make a Star Trek “cool” enough to get me to like it. It worked, but at what cost? Older fans liked Star Trek for what it was, uncoolness and all, but to attract newer fans they changed a lot of it. I'm all for creators not being completely beholden to a fanbase but the creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, is long dead so it wasn't even his call. Now I don’t know how old Trek fans feel about this new movie but to me it felt as if something had been taken away from someone only to be given to me, someone who didn’t really want it in the first place. Accepting it felt hypocritical because I know how bad it is to be on the other side of that equation because of my experience with Transformers. With these movies I’ve seen everything I ever liked about the franchise ripped out of my hands only to be given to people who would’ve paid to see anything and wouldn’t have cared otherwise.

You know what though, it’s kind of a good thing that I appear to be so personally bothered by these trivial movies because one, I’m really not, passion just makes for fun and lengthy writing and two, it fortunately shows how little real problems I actually have :)

Since it is Independence Day and all I just feel that I should clarify that I’m not staunchly anti-military in real life or even in movies. I love stuff like Saving Private Ryan and I'm grateful for the freedom and protection to even write this stuff like this. I just resent the focus on the army in what should be a sci-fi giant robot movie in my opinion.

If you still want to chastise me though be sure to comment below

Themes That Go With Things

2011-07-02T01:33:00.001-05:00

I’m not sure how to feel that so far my most popular article has been a short-essay on a dumb internet joke. But give the people what they want. This time I'm talking about themes that go with certain situations. For example, Guile’s theme from Street Fighter II, well, it goes with everything. Just look.

"Go home and be a family man"- Guile

And for a time that was all we needed. A theme that went with everything. But as the internet evolved, and it does so rapidly, new uses were discovered for new themes.

As for one of my favorite…things M.O.D.O.K., it turns out his theme from Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is perfect for trolling (being a jerk on the internet or elsewhere for the sake of being an ironic humorous jerk. Again, too massive a concept to cover here)

"If you think I've evolved beyond the joys of trolling, you'd be wrong"- M.O.D.O.K.

But the most recent discovery, made by one of my favorite video game website Giant Bomb, is that “Power” by Kanye West works seamlessly with darn near every video game trailer out there. Just look.

Only one of these trailers was real. Can you guess?

By the way that last Kirby game is an example of the weird Kirby games I'd like to see more of and mentioned in this article.

It was this revelation that inspired me to write this. (mostly because I was listening to a lot of that amazing album and was thinking about writing a piece about hip-hop and how its performers and labels are paradoxically both individualistic and collaborative, egotistical and doubtful and just straight-up weird like that Odd Future stuff, wow that was long) But then I realized I can talk about memes way better than I can talk about music.

And that was only a taste of some of the amazing combinations of situation and song created by the internet community great and terrible.

You guys have any sort of reaction to this? Post a comment below. I’ll get it started

No one story should have all that cool, bro

swag

Resident Evil The Mercenaries 3D Review

2011-06-29T16:32:00.003-05:00

It was only last week when the timeless classic The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D arrived on the 3DS to breathe much-needed new life into Nintendo’s latest handheld. Now another big-name franchise, Capcom’s horror-shooter Resident Evil, has come to ride that wave and continue this string of hits.

But does it succeed?

In a lot of ways, good and bad, Resident Evil The Mercenaries 3D is kind of like counter-programming to Ocarina. Granted they both appeal to core gamers but Zelda is a whimsical, all-ages, fantasy action-adventure affair. Meanwhile, Resident Evil is about brutally killing zombies and zombie-like creatures in spooky ghost towns and third-world countries. Also, while Zelda is a deep, fulfilling experience with dozens of hours of content, Mercenaries 3D is mindless action that can be breezed through in a day.

It’s important to make the distinction between Resident Evil Mercenaries and Resident Evil proper. While the more recent Resident Evil games have had increased emphasis on third-person shooting action, they have managed to maintain some of the suspense, and more importantly, the length of the earlier games. Mercenaries, originally in a minigame in those other recent games, is simply about putting those shooting mechanics in an arcade-style, score-attack setting.

Truth is they are fun and addictive mechanics. The 30 missions have you killing as many zombies as possible in a variety of ways before the time runs out. The more you kill in a row, the higher your combo, the higher your score. There’s a bit of strategy to the proceedings as well. Littered across the maps are markers that give you additional time when broken. More time means more zombies to kill means higher chances of getting that classic Japanese S rank. However, if you die you lose and the more time you have to kill the encroaching hordes the more time they have to kill you.

Also, since this game is based on Resident Evil 4 and 5, most of the zombies are either Spaniards or Africans making the whole “kill as many as you can with your military equipment” premise kind of weird but... Japan... so whatever. If a giant bug erupted from someone’s neck while they were threatening me with an axe I’d probably shoot it too no matter what color the neck used to be.

What was once a console gaming experience controls fine on the 3DS. The circle pad is a fine substitute for an analog stick when it comes to moving and aiming. There are a handful of other control options including axis-inversions and even the ability to aim in third or first-person. The controls kind of have to work though in a game all about its mechanics with no plot or anything else to back it up.

Playing through these missions gives you access to five more playable characters from the series, in addition to the initial three, each with their own arsenals. While some may feel safe with Chris Redfield’s standard pistols, grenades, rifles and shotguns, I prefer Krauser’s knife and bow with infinite arrows. It’s strange that popular Resident Evil 4 star Leon S. Kennedy isn’t here though. Capcom says it’s because of that upcoming Resident Evil: Raccoon City game from the SOCOM developers but I’m still working on a theory that Leon and Chris are secretly the same person. When have they ever been in a game together?

Between this and Super Street Fighter 4, Capcom is getting pretty good and making 3DS visually on par with their next-gen counterparts. If you look closely you can there are a lot shortcuts being taken and tricks being implemented though. Character models are great but environmental textures are blurry. There are plenty of enemies but they lose animation frames out in the distance. Plus the audio quality is strangely lacking. Still, for a handheld game, being this console-like is a technical achievement. It’s in 3D too I guess but once again in my opinion nothing is really gained except aliasing problems.

Now that sounds like a lot of positives for a game that I ultimately wouldn’t recommend. There are flaws like weird presentational quirks like having to go through two menus to change missions and being able to see enemies on the map would’ve been nice.

The war on horror? I get it.

However, the biggest problem is just the sheer lack of content. I admire how this game takes the mechanics and production value of a console game and marries them to the mindless, short burst of action style of gameplay that excels on a handheld. That still isn’t enough though to compensate for how little there actually is to do in Mercenaries 3d. There are 30 missions that are usually each maybe five minutes at the most and less than a minute at the least. Playing them again online or locally with friends is incredibly fun and totally worth doing but still won’t extend your game time that much.

There are some other noble attempts to pad out the experience like the unlockable characters, costumes, new load-outs, and a whole host of skills you can level up and apply to characters. Weirdly enough you can even use the play coins you earn by walking around with your 3DS to buy some of this stuff.

Finally, packaged with Mercenaries 3D is a brief, and I mean brief, demo for the upcoming 2012 release Resident Evil: Revelations. It’s pretty and plays fine but it’s too short to make any real judgment on it. Still, it promises to be the substantial, single-player experience fans expect from the franchise.

Closing

I rarely complain that a game is overpriced. One, I have no concept of money and value and two, if a game is fun I usually don’t have a problem paying however much for it. That’s why reviews that say “wait for a price drop” tend to bother me. Plus trying to create a “length to perceived value” ratio for games is a little weird too.

Resident Evil The Mercenaries 3D is a rare exception though. At $40 it costs twice as much as what would be acceptable and $30 more than what it probably deserves. It’s fun enough that it’s worth playing, just nearly enough to justify its length and cost.

There’s also this whole controversy what with there only being one save slot and no way to delete it so far. Apparently it’s a conspiracy to destroy the used games business. I didn’t really care because this isn’t a linear, story-filled campaign that must be played in sequence. Any mission can be played at any time for a higher score once unlocked. Playing a used copy with someone else’s save data wouldn’t really ruin the experience. If anything it’d just give you some high scores to try and beat.

However, I understand the dangerous precedent it could set. Having this limitation in other games, like Zelda to bring it back full-circle, would be horrible. It’s just that’s not Mercenaries 3D biggest failing by a long shot.

Mind Dump 5- The Devil and Nic Cage, plus more shout-outs

2011-06-27T19:17:00.002-05:00

This is a momentous mind dump because not only is it the first to be formed as a single story Linguistic Gimmicks style, but it is also the first to be presented in a revolutionary new format called video.

But first I wanted to remind you, as I will periodically do, that if you support this kind of nonsense from me then you can follow or subscribe through the box on the top right of this page

MORE AFTER THE BREAK

I also wanted to give shout-outs to the new additions on my blog roll as well as to some others. You can read the original list here.

Red Letter Media and Spill are both weird and hilarious movie review sites I frequent. Red Letter Media is behind those ridiculously long and creepy Star Wars prequel reviews.

Jools Watsham is a game developer I have a lot of respect for and The Game Overthinker is a game commenter I have a lot of respect for. He’s also Moviebob from the first list.

My friends Sam, Aho (A. Ho) and JJ also have blogs you should visit and while experiencing them through the internet doesn’t compare to the real thing, it’ll certainly do for now. Plus Sam’s blog is about video game music, an awesome topic I’ll probably write something about in some crazy cross-promotion type deal.

You guys ever have any weird, specific, plot-heavy dreams that made no sense but also kind of did? Or do you just have anything to say period. Please to be commenting below then.

OMG guinea pigs

Video Game Design Colleges: Teaching the Developers of Tomorrow

2011-06-24T20:42:00.023-05:00

I did my final project for my multimedia journalism class on the increase in schools offering video game design programs and what that means for the industry. You can enjoy the fruits of my reporting below.

READ THE TEXT STORY HERE

Video Story on DePaul University's Game Design Program

Audio Interview with Professor Jose P. Zagal

MORE AFTER THE BREAK

So I Saw Green Lantern…

2011-06-21T00:53:00.005-05:00

In case I haven’t said it before, I kind of like movies based on comics. Sometimes my comic knowledge makes me criticize a movie in ways average fans would never think of doing but other times it makes me more accepting of movies everyone else seems to hate.

With that in mind here’s what I thought on the comic-based, critically-reviled “Green Lantern” a.k.a guy with ring that makes stuff.

The key to not being angered by this movie, as some fans are, is to modify expectations. I know it's kind of sad to lower expectations but if you calm down, to quote a friend(?) of mine, and come into Green Lantern knowing it won’t be the crazy awesome space opera it should be you’ll be better able to appreciate it as the average, mid-2000s superhero origin movie it is.

Granted, all of the Earth-bound Top Gun nonsense is plodding nonsense. Just like with Transformers, if you show me a never-before-seen alien world don’t expect me to be more interested in the middling drama of an aircraft company on a planet I see every day. Thor kind of had the same issue but for as much as I disliked it, its Earth scenes worked way better because, through the character of Thor, we were supposed to feel like Earth was lame compared to the neon cosmic realm of Asgard.

However, Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively are totally fine for the cliché roles they were tasked with playing. I have respect for Nathan Fillion but no one should expect him to play the lead in all these nerd movies (Uncharted) where the main character looks sort of like him. Peter Sarsgaard is also kind of perfect as the ultimate creeper, Hector Hammond.

I made out with Liam Neeson. U jelly

Speaking of Hammond, lots of people have enlarged heads in this movie. Hammond, Parallax, the Guardians of the Universe, Sinestro…

Geoffrey Rush, Michael Clarke Duncan and Angela Bassett are also all really good in like the ten minutes of screen time they each get despite how important their characters have the potential of being. Poozer is still a dumb word though.

It seems each new Green Lantern thing has its own explanation for Abin Sur’s death.

I think the effects too are at least decent. I didn't see it in 3D because I still don't hate myself. Even though cloud monsters are dumb in all contexts the Parallax/Krona/Legion cloud monster works better than the Galactus cloud monster. Oa looks neat as do the ring constructs especially during the Sinestro (another underutilized character) duel despite how ridiculous they are. As for the CG suits, I understand the problem one might have with the fake look but the idea that they are just manifestations of the rings actually justifies it a lot for me. And Ryan Reynolds's head never felt out of place.

As much as I like Green Lantern the concept, it seems way less cool once you realize they’re just space cops.

Much like X3’s use of the phoenix force, this movie tries to cram in some ideas way too big for one movie. Just by using Parallax they bring up the whole Geoff Johns light/emotional spectrum in which one color equals one feeling like fear equals yellow and there are all of these other lantern corps running around like some kind of rainbow coalition. That kind of weird and abstract concept works far better for the space opera the Green Lantern comic has become and not the sci-fi tinged superhero movie this movie is content being.

And for as much as I like Martin Campbell after he saved James Bond twice with Goldeneye and Casino Royale, it really shows that he didn't care at all about directing this movie. Great job.

So it's not that good, but certainly not worth getting angry or offended over.

I’ll end by plugging this video. I was listening to this song one day and thought “someone should play this with some Green Lantern footage” and lucky for me someone did.

I love though how the Justice League cartoon has got a whole generation of kids (including me) thinking John Stewart, the black Green Lantern and one of Hal’s like three back-ups, is the main one. Where was he in this movie DC? Maybe they’ll do the story where Hal doesn’t want him as his alternate and only accepts him after the Guardians tell him to stop being racist. True story.

I'd also accept Daffy Duck or a purple octopus of compassion

Why Do I Own This? : Laser Pointer

2011-06-17T15:52:00.003-05:00

I make a fair amount of dumb, ironic purchases of things like Tron discs, Stitch hands and Babysitting Mama. But few have as much potential to destroy physical objects than this 200 MW Green Laser Pointer I paid $30 for on Amazon.

This consumer product is a class III laser device and since pointing it at planes can blind pilots, shining it at them can lead to major FAA fines. I wonder how they could (back)trace it to one person but I don’t want to take that risk.

I bought this after stumbling upon this article comparing laser pointers of different colors. I was interested in learning what separated a green one from a yellow one from a red one. Little did I know that this would enlighten me to a whole, fascinating subcommunity of laser pointer enthusiasts complete with forums giving detailed instructions on how to burn stuff with them.

So naturally I bought by own, and through demonstrations like the one you saw above, encouraged my friends to do the same. I swear, next year’s suite is going to look like something out of Splinter Cell. Oddly enough, it was only after replacing the packed-in batteries did the laser start popping balloons. I’m convinced the manufacturer purposefully included underpowered batteries to sabotage this kind of nonsense, as well as stealth harassment. BUT WE WILL NOT BE STOPPED!

Green Laser>Green Lantern

So I Saw Super 8…

2011-06-15T19:49:00.001-05:00

If you’re reading this on your phone, you’re welcome for the new mobile-friendly template that I activated by clicking like one button.

Since much of the build-up to Super 8 was based around secrecy I decided to start off this review type thing with all the thoughts I had on the film before seeing it. Granted, I love spoilers and absorbing entertainment news in general so I had a better idea of what was going to happen than most people. Still, there were some surprises to be had.

Pre-movie thoughts

In theory, I have little interest in movies that use lots of nostalgia, or for that matter movies about childhood nostalgia, but if they are done well enough that usually doesn’t matter. For example, I love love love The Iron Giant. Also this movie is harkening back to movies like E.T. which I also love.

What I don’t love though is stuff like The Goonies. Stuff like E.T. works for me because it combines something I don’t like, child-centric movies, with something I do like, sci-fi. However, The Goonies is a child-centric movie with Indiana Jones style adventuring, another trope I don’t like. Luckily for Super 8, it’s giving off much more of an E.T. vibe.

It’s also giving off a Cloverfield vibe which is another movie that I love love love. It shouldn’t be that surprising since J.J. Abrams had a hand in both films. Speaking off Abrams, one thing that concerns me is that I personally think that Abrams has never directed a really “great” movie. Mission Impossible 3 is fine and the new Star Trek is good but massively overrated (which I fear might happen with this movie). Plus all of his secrets and mysteries are the reason I could never get into Lost (but that’s for another post).

I have mad respect for Spielberg and Amblin though. (The last week of college I was just shouting “TINTIN!” constantly after watching that trailer) So I’m pretty excited about Super 8.

That and the trailer music was awesome.

Post-movie thoughts and possible spoilers

I’m not gonna lie. This movie is pretty mint (Super 8 slang for good) and here’s why, in no particular order.

It’s a lot funnier and darker than I ever expected what with the violence and death kicked off by the amazing train crash sequence. Maybe that helped offset the fact that it really is all about the kids and their drama rather than the alien.

But the child actors are actually all very good and I sort of cared about them, Elle Fanning in particular. By the way I refuse to accept a world where both Fannings are legitimate actresses. Luckily Dakota got sucked into those Twilight movies.

Good thing I didn’t really care about the monster though because that whole plot kind of peters out. Some of my friends were convinced it was secretly the Cloverfield monster (which by the way I think is a better movie ultimately) and after seeing its nondescript design it might has well of been. Except he has those expressive “I just want to phone home eyes” and psychic link powers so kids can relate with its otherwise unsympathetic appearance.

But back to the kids, all of their cute little adventures and projects like the fat one wanting to make a movie with “production value” or the weird one blowing stuff up were really entertaining. Summer/end of school time is a good time for some childhood nostalgia.

Abrams also paints a good, nostalgic version of the late seventies with super 8 cameras, sketchy video store guys, weird hair and sideburns on deadbeat Midwestern dads and “My Sharona”. However, maybe it’s my lack of personal nostalgia for this time period that made me like this movie more than some critics. I didn’t feel like some studio was trying to exploit my memories. Or maybe it’s because I haven’t yet started critically examining the film the way other critics have been paid to do.

pic unrelated

The initial experience was enjoyable enough at face value to keep me from noticing the false or non-existent emotional climaxes, vague character motivations, dangling plot threads and how, in general the story doesn’t hold together at the end. Homages are nice but a movie can only fit so many (Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., The Goonies) and this one has a bit much.

The slow ramp-up to that ending, instead of being boring like I feared, is actually very compelling and gets you very invested in what’s going on. Once all the dogs peace out you know it’s gotta be more than just the soviets.

Few characters have moms. Disney much?

But what really endeared me to this movie, besides the hilarious projectile vomiting children, was its great use of “small town sheriff gets into a big ego fight with the army once he gets sad after they remind him that he has no real power outside his little town no one cares about”. It’s not the biggest plot point but there’s nothing better than watching different levels of law enforcement fight each other instead of the real threat as well as just being incompetent in their own ways. I know people like the actor who played the dad because of the show "Friday Night Lights", which I would maybe watch if I watched TV or cared at all about football, and while the actor seemed fine, I didn’t like his character at all outside of the “mine’s bigger” arguments he had with dudes in fancier uniforms.

Since this is a movie kind of about movies and movie-making, I thought it was appropriate to see this with some film majors and I didn’t even have to be one of them to be bothered by all the lens flare. But I’ll repeat, I think this movie is a great, theater-going experience. In a summer full of genre franchise movies good and bad, it’s nice when little anomalies like this come around. I have this creeping suspicion that, in time, this buzz will get eaten away by cynicism and the whole thing will fall apart because of those issues I mentioned earlier but I’m gonna enjoy this high while it lasts.

it has a great poster too

Stay through the end credits too for a neat little bonus movie about a zombie outbreak caused by “Romero” chemical. That’s clever right there.

Now it’s time to lower my Green Lantern expectations as far as humanely possible.

Jordan's Obligatory E3 reactions

2011-06-13T23:16:00.002-05:00

While I’m sure it can't compete with the frantic, crowded craziness of E3, moving back home after finishing my freshman year at Northwestern has proven hectic enough to delay this post by a few days. Plus, after the conference ended, I discovered that I did not have many reactions worth elaborating on. All I really had to say was stuff like “the controller has a screen it, I already knew that but it’s still neat."

Because so much about gaming comes from interaction, there is only so much one can gather from trailers. In addition, the gameplay of stuff like Mario Kart and all of the blasted first person shooters kind of speak for themselves. So I’ve reached this point where there’s so little knowledge to be learned, playing the games is what I’m excited for. And since I’m not able to go to E3, yet, that’s still a ways off.

But if you are still interested this is what I thought about this year’s show. And if you care that much keep refreshing because I may add new stuff if it comes to me and but I won’t tell anyone.

NINTENDO

Wii U is a dumb name, as is Playstation Vita but Wii U is worse, however after living with Wii for five years I’m so beyond caring about names at this point it really doesn’t matter at all.

What matters is games and while the hardware seems perfectly serviceable, great even, I need to see actual games before really getting exciting. Not tech demos like New Super Mario Bros. Mii or Zelda and not ports of third party stuff coming this fall. I understand why Nintendo needs to highlight third parties but solid, first party titles is what excites most people, including me, when it comes to that company.

Like this but, you know, a game

And they have to be games that, like, exist. I can’t get excited about Smash Bros. until it becomes a real game. Otherwise I’ll just literally destroy myself from anticipation for three years like last time and that was only sort of fun.

Battlefield, Warren Spector (NU alum!) games and Ken Levine games coming to Wii U is genuinely exciting though. Thanks to Playstation Move, it appears Levine realizes what Wii owners have known for years that, if made properly, shooters control arguably better on the platform. Hopefully Spector’s next game will have all the heart of Epic Mickey without the fundamentally flawed foundation that I might one day write about in a review-type essay.

People have thrown out the idea of using the two screens and touch screens of Wii U as a next-generation Game Boy player but with DS games. Take it one step further, maybe a future version of it could play 3DS games. But that would require most people to have 3D TVs and that isn’t a future I want to live in.

Being a reversed version of one of my favorite Zelda songs, Zelda’s lullaby, Skyward Sword’s main theme initially sounded very strange. However, the whole Zelda orchestra, besides just being very cool, finally sold me on the song. Between playing Link’s Awakening on the 3DS virtual console and looking forward to Ocarina 3D this Sunday, I’m quite hyped on Zelda these days.

They trotted out Robin Williams daughter Zelda. Really?

Kid Icarus Uprising once again shows Sakurai’s affinity for production value and weird, talky, anime sense of humor. Sure why not?

Super Mario 3D looks really good but I’m concerned about this ongoing trend of 2D sensibilities creeping back into 3D Mario games. I know people like the classic stuff and that 2D Mario games sell way better but there was merit to Mario 64’s big, open, exploration-focused levels. Don’t abandon that. Maybe try it on Wii U?

As for the conference as a whole, it’s obvious that even when Nintendo has cool things with hardcore potential, they don’t present them in a way that just caters to hardcore. It was better than, say, their 2008 conference. But some very self-entitled people had this ridiculous idea that they were going to abandon casuals all together and like grovel at the feet of hardcore gamers and beg them to take them back. Once you get over how stupid that is, you’ll realize that, while not perfect by any means, it was probably the best conference.

EVERYONE ELSE

I didn’t actually watch Microsoft’s conference but I heard it was mostly this

And maybe some Halos too.

It’s funny to watch another company and fan base go through what I’d like to call the “Nintendo Cycle” of shift towards casual while trying to look like you aren’t. Not even some Peter Molyneux craziness can stop that.

I have a lot of respect for Uncharted, but I personally don’t care about the franchise at all. Much like Lord of the Rings, the whole Indiana Jones adventure aesthetic is something I recognize as high quality but have little to no interest in whatsoever. It’s apparently just one of my many controversial opinions.

The main character from Infamous being in Street Fighter x Tekken is about as funny and dumb as all the other nonsensical fighting game cameos like Link and Yoda in Soul Calibur.

The Playstation Vita pricing (starting from $250 just like the 3DS) is incredibly smart and aggressive. Nintendo should probably respond somehow. It was a good move in Sony’s otherwise solid but kind of boring show.

But none of this really matters because Duke Nukem comes out today. Stand by for the end of the world.

the controller has a screen in it

2011-06-07T16:12:00.002-05:00

I'll do a real E3 reaction post once it's over but for now...

also

omg they turned mario kart into diddy kong racing

omg luigi's mansion

omg 3d trailers on eshop

omg HD

Even when Nintendo has a cool thing, they aren't the greatest at presenting it as cool. But as dumb as the name Wii U is, it's a very cool looking device.

Jordan's Obligatory E3 Predictions Post

2011-06-06T01:34:00.000-05:00

With classes pretty much over, it's time for me to get back into this whole blogging thing and with E3 a.k.a. Christmas for game news happening today I figured it's time for...

JORDAN'S OBLIGATORY E3 PREDICTIONS WITH JOECEPHUS THE PSYABETIC SQUID

It’s so hard to separate expectations from what I want so I won’t really try

1. I think a Pikmin game will be finally announced. I want it for both 3DS and the new café console or whatever they call it. Maybe just "The Nintendo"

2. I think GTA V will end up on café. I want them to show it during the conference

3. I think Scott Moffitt will end up on stage. I want him to be hardcore

4. I think the eshop (why can’t we transfer saves?) will be discussed I want it to have access to previous VC purchases

5. I think café’s price and launch won’t be discussed. I want it to be around June 2012

6. I think Skyward Sword will look better. I wish its release timing could have been better, seriously Nintendo, stop putting Zeldas in these weird transitional positions

I only really care about Nintendo but for the sake of fairness...

7. I think the NGP/PS Vita will have a fate like the PSP. I want Nintendo to adopt their download model

8. I want Star Wars: The Old Republic to co-exist with WOW and I think it will

9. I think Gears 3 was pushed from April to September because Microsoft has nothing else for end of this year. I want to be wrong.

10. I think Ubisoft should stop annualizing the otherwise high quality Assassin’s Creed franchise so I can start wanting it again.

But none of this really matters since all you people seem to care about is the origin of dumb memes anyway

So I saw X-Men: First Class...

2011-06-03T03:40:00.008-05:00

Let’s do this again

It’s better than X3 and Wolverine and probably the first one too.

Why are all of the minority mutants either evil or dead? It’s kind of ironic considering how much of a civil rights parallel this series is.

Why would mutants makes fun of other mutants for being mutants?

The successful combination of period movie and superhero movie gives me hope for Captain America. All the Magneto as a rogue, super-powered Nazi-hunting James Bond works really well.

There are continuity issues but come one, stop caring. It fits well enough. Worrying does no good.

Of course (insert cameo) is in it and says (insert cameo dialogue). Perfect

The 1960s period was a cool style choice and allowed for interesting use of real history and hair like Kevin Bacon’s. Kevin Bacon is pretty great in general as is the Hellfire club and their stupid helmets.

Why use sad cat face Beast?

Boy they picked some obscure characters for this thing. Cyclops’ brother and Nightcrawler’s dad? Really?

Magneto and Professor X have a good mutant, “no human ladies allowed”, bromance. Plus James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender have the appropriate, round and square respectively, head shapes to grow into Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan.

There's far less teen angst than I feared.

I feel this will the best comic movie of the summer which sends a good message to the people that think only Marvel Studios can make good Marvel movies.

THANK GOD THIS ISN’T GETTING DRAGGED INTO THAT AVENGERS NONSENSE!

also no 3D and that's real cool too

Too bad this isn't the real title sequence

X-Men: First Class Title Sequence from Joe D! on Vimeo.

I loved each time they showed Magneto's lower row of teeth

Oh Hey Bro, Gamecube? Sweet!

2011-05-27T00:07:00.003-05:00

Life is hectic right now at Northwestern University as we enter the final stretch. Luckily, after this last week or so of hell (and slice armadillo heaven this Saturday), I'll be finished with my freshman year.

As such, there'll be little time for trivial acts like blogging. I'll be too busy doing important things like reporting on video games, which you'll see later. To tide you over here's some of the nonsense I've been doing here at NU. Bropocalypse Now (episode 1?), my team's entry for last Fall's Campus Movie Fest.

Also watch this student film made by some friends of mine mostly because it's awesome but also because I have a special thanks in the credits for letting them use my tripod for a little while. It was the least I could do after documenting their casting process for a journalism assignment.