Welcome vandalism

That's definitely an improvement. Thanks, random person!

Dear Sony...

I feel like maybe I put this off for too long, talking to you like this. It seems like I should have taken you aside the second you announced "The Amazing Spiderman" would be a be a sort-of reboot. 

Telling Spiderman's origin story again with a severely reduced budget, starring Eduardo from "The Social Network" seemed like the kind of corporate stupidity Hollywood revels in.

It just feels so...focus grouped. 

Tailored to make the board executives chortle vigorously into their kiddie pools of Patrón and silver dollars.

Thankfully that corporate mindset has payed off for you guys. "The Amazing Spiderman" earned $35 million on opening day. The business shamans (analysts) are saying it will earn $140 million by Sunday.

 Granted, you probably are a little disappointed it didn't do as well as the Raimi Spiderman movies, but I'm sure you'll power through it.

The movie has even done well with the foppish internet movie critics of our day. It's sitting pretty with a 71 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.

I'm happy it all worked out for you. Really I am. You probably have all celebrated by retreating to your own private islands and doing whatever it is disturbingly rich executives do, like hunting Narwals.

The thing is, there's a problem here. It's reflected in most of the reviews, which is usually one sentence that prefaces the first paragraph;

Why exactly does this movie exist?

It's not about the quality of the film, it's that everyone still remembers the first Sam Raimi Spiderman. 

Even worse, they remember that there were two Sam Raimi Spiderman movies after that one, which means that the Spiderman character and universe were already pretty well established by the time you decided to set everything back to square one with the reboot.

Why exactly did you decide to redo the origin story, by the way?

I can rationalize everything else as corporate stupidity. But the attempted Batman Begins of the franchise seems like regular stupidity.

It doesn't help that the Spiderman origin is that special kind of comic book silliness.

A guy gets bitten by a radio active spider, which then gives him super charged parkour powers and the spider fueled intelligence to build web shooters. No amount of Christopher Nolans could make that "gritty" or "real."

It's not that I don't understand your situation, Sony. I know that you have to keep making Spiderman movies to keep the rights from reverting back to Marvel. I know that must have put you in a bind when Sam and Co scattered to the wind after you forced them to make Spiderman 3 terrible.

I understand all that, but...just, listen. Here's a secret that will probably make you all simultaneously shatter your capitalistic movie making monocles; A new superhero movie, or at least a reboot, doesn't have to be an origin story. 

Think back to the one movie that really got this whole trend going, Tim Burton's Batman. How cool was it that we knew next to nothing about The Batman? He was like a mythical creature to everyone in Gotham. Choosing not to focus on how he became that myth enhanced that aspect.

How cool would it be if you bought the rights to, say, "Moon Knight" and then did a movie that never even mentioned his origin? Sooo cool Sony, that's how cool it would be.

See, the thing you also have to realize is that it doesn't really matter, monetarily at least, what the Spiderman movies are about. "Spiderman 3" made $890.9 million worldwide and featured an emo haired, dancing Peter Parker.

It's enough for Spiderman to be in the title to get the herds into the theaters. Why not use that fact as not an excuse to shart out a reboot, but an economic freedom to really experiment with the franchise?

At the very least, you could temporarily allow Marvel the Spiderman character for "Avengers 2." That would then build up some buzz for whatever Spiderman movie you would need then to put into production (maybe a Harlem Globetrotters crossover, just throwing it out there. I might have a treatment floating around, somewhere...) while giving the fanboys what they want.

Either way Sony, you need to do something to make them fanboys happy. We remember Turn Off the Dark.

We'll always remember, you bastards.

Why Yes, I Do Believe We Need A New God. I Vote For This Guy

I don't even know what to type here. Just please, watch this video. It's..beyond words.

So What Should Be Done About these “Women” Then?

See, there are these things called “women.” You are probably familiar with them as a concept. Maybe you’re friends with one, or even married to a member of the apparent “fairer” sex. I’m not here to judge.

The thing is women like to play video games. This was once considered a myth derided as heresy by the video game playing shamans, but these days there are more women interested in games than ever before.

The ESA has found that as much as 40 percent of the current video game audience is female. Some women might even like Facebook games more than sex! Keep in mind that last study was carried out by Doritos, who are not fully licensed sexologist examiners.

The Little Kids at CLU are Awesome

Yahtzee almost wrote Duke Nukem Forever

Apparently at some point Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, the Australian maniac behind the excellent Zero Punctuation reviews, was approached to write a script for Duke Nukem Forever when it was still with 3D Realms.

He had the idea of the game taking the piss a bit more, where Duke is essentially a more obvious 90's action hero parody with some much needed irony. Sadly 3D Realms wasn't too keen on this idea and turned him into the misogynistic idiot the game desperately tries to pass off as genuine.

All we can do now is imagine how amazing a Yahtzee penned Duke Nukem game could have been. And hope someone finds the audition script.

You can read the rest of the story on escapistmagazine.com. For some reason I can't post links.

Adventures in Drunk Gaming: Cthulhu Saves the World

There aren’t enough games that feature Cthulhu or the other works of H.P. Lovecraft, the spindly, racist nerd that introduced the world to cosmic horror.

There also aren’t enough games that feature Cthulhu reluctantly stepping up to save the world as opposed to destroying it, like a tentacled John McClane facing down a German Alan Rickman. This is so he can then destroy said world, because fuck German Alan Rickman. That bastard killed Dumbledore.

Thankfully, the world now has Cthulhu Saves the World.

If it’s not obvious by now, I’m writing this while consuming just enough Jack Daniels to be Charming. This is also how I played the game Cthulhu Saves the World for my new column Adventures in Drunk Gaming that I will probably never revisit because while writing this sentence I leveled up to Angry Drunk and FUCK THE NEW TEEN WOLF, FUCK IT RIGHT IN IT’S FAT NECK!!!!

But I digress. Cthulhu Saves the World was developed for the Xbox Live Indie Marketplace by Zeboyd games, a small developer that has so far specialized in old school RPGs that fill nerds with nostalgic juices. These juices are potent and if harvested correctly, can be used to make Marmite.

The game sells for less than $5 when you convert it from Xbox Live Fun Money, which isn’t too bad for a game that actually feels more polished than something like Final Fantasy XIII.

The game opens up with Cthulhu doing stuff. Then he for some reason decides to become a hero so he can get back his powers and destroy the world. A girl also becomes his groupie along the way. He might have tricked the bad guy by taping a gun to his back at one point, but I think that’s Die Hard again.

Anyway, the game plays like absolutely any old school RPG ever made. What sets it apart is that you can actually drive enemies insane for different strategic effects. This can also backfire as some enemies become stupidly more powerful while insane.

The dialogue is also legitimately funny, not just drunk “laugh at everything” funny. Cthulhu is a fish out of water that desperately wants to eviscerate everyone around him, but he can’t because of a curse that is never explained. Comedy!

Cthulhu Saves the World is pretty great considering the price and that three people made it. As a drunk man that’s currently regretting a lot of life decisions, I give it a B out of 10.

Sucker Punch: Geeksploitation at it’s Finest

Imagine if Zack Snyder came into your house one day and took an anime DVD, a comic book and a Battletoads cartridge and put it in a blender. He would take this fine paste of extreme nerdery and spread it onto a scarf, which would be wrapped around his right fist.

He would then read aloud “A Scanner Darkly,” and just as you are about to ask him what the hell is going on, he cold-cocks you across the room.

This is the experience you get from Sucker Punch. It is, with so many grating imperfections, ridiculously exhilarating.

Emily Browning’s Baby Doll, a girl who initially looks so fragile she would shatter in half if a butterfly bumped into her, is sent to an insane asylum for accidentally killing her sister.

Shortly after she arrives the asylum shifts to a Moulin Rouge-esq brothel where the girls dance to entice clientele. Here Baby Doll learns that she can slip into a realm of action video game insanity by dancing and is instructed by the appropriately named Wise Man (Scott Glenn) to collect a number of objects that would allow her to escape.

The biggest strength here is that the script doesn’t do the tired dance of asking the audience to constantly question what is real or what is just Baby Doll’s psychosis, ala Shutter Island.

It’s all real for her, so it’s good enough for the audience.

It also helps that the transitions into the different realities are handled so well. Snyder manages to create a unique atmosphere and aesthetic for each of them. The fact that he can take us to them on a whim without any it of feeling jarring is commendable.

It’s when we get to the third stage, the one initiated by Baby Doll’s dancing, where Snyder’s forte is put to it’s limit.

The action is loud, full of detailed CGI and most importantly, smooth as butter. Lesser folks such as Michael Bay fill their action with nauseating amounts of camera shake and lens flare, but this is to hide the simple fact that they have no idea how to make things flow.

In Sucker Punch the fights are swimming in flow with no sense of self-restraint. There are Gatling gun touting samurai giants, steam punk WWII Nazi zombies, power armor straight out of “Starship Troopers” and even a Tolkien-esque dragon.

It’s like instead of an outline for the story, Snyder wrote a list of things from nerd entertainment he wanted in an action movie and worked up from there.

With all this visual insanity you would hope that the acting is just as sublime, but this is where the movie nearly kills itself.

To be fair Browning is competent and Abbie Cornish’s Sweet Pea has a few moments where she isn’t completely terrible.

Oscar Isaac’s turn as Blue Jones is pitch perfect even, with him giving the movie a villain to hate and sympathize with.

But everyone else, especially the group of girls that follow Baby Doll into the insanity world, might as well just be looking into the camera and repeating “I’m acting.”

Cornish has no subtlety with the bulk of her performance, giving over emphasis to what should be tender moments.

It’s also unfortunate that Jena Malone’s Rocket is a central character as she exemplifies how some of these girls should kill more robots and never talk.

The actors aren’t really helped by the dialogue though, with some lines drenched in cheese.

Thankfully Sucker Punch is just barely able to redeem itself with a genuinely surprising and entertaining overall story.

An argument could be made that there are some profound messages here, but I don’t think Zack Snyder ever really intended to have any kind of deeper meaning to the script.

He just wanted to make a movie with everything he loves and geeks out to, like Quentin Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez.

That’s what makes Sucker Punch worth taking the plunge; it’s a film made by a big nerd that looks amazing. It has some serious problems, but thankfully it has enough to overcome the major stumbles.

Geek Cutlure, Extra Culture: Response to 3DS.

Recently Nintendo announced the followup to the mega-selling DS, the 3D capable 3DS. It will be released sometime between April 2010 and March 2011, it will be able to display 3D graphics without the need of glasses and it will probably have the capabilities of an underpowered Gamecube.
This news actually annoys me a bit. Why? Because if you recently bought a DSi or a DS XL, you now have roughly a year to enjoy your handheld before it’s officially old technology.
I realize this is how Nintendo does things. They release a lousy handheld and then screw over the early adopters with a better model not too long after release, and repeat the process until it’s time to release a new handheld and start all over again.
Hell, in an a way, that’s just how technology works. The first iPhone was a bit of laggy joke compared to the 3G, and that’s now showing it’s age next to the 3GS.
But regardless of that, it still feels too soon for a new DS, even when you consider that it was released in 2004.
The DSi and it’s online store has just recently managed to produce some great content. Give it another 2-3 years, and it could grow into something great, maybe even finally delivering the downloadable Gameboy and Advance games often rumored about.
This isn’t even mentioning the DSi exclusive games we have heard about. What have we seen so far, one game? A little more time would give developers an opportunity to really experiment with those two cameras, Nintendo.
There’s also the fact that this really doesn’t make much sense from a business standpoint when you consider the DSi XL. The newer handheld is only a year away. Couple that with the fact that, according to Kotaku, you will not be able to transfer DSi Ware games, do you really think anyone will seriously put down money on the XL when they could just wait for the newer model?
You could argue that casual gamers who don’t this kind of news probably would. Which is a fair point. But don’t you think those casual users would be pissed to find out that they need to buy a new system just to enjoy some Avatar like effects?
Nintendo isn’t exactly hurting for money at the moment. They could probably push back the new DS and give their hardware some more time to mature, and keep this nerd from nuking his savings account for a little while longer.

Game of the year

Here's something called Progress Wars. Some people claim it to be a "parody" of facebook games like Mafia War or Farmville.

I say that it is the true face of gaming god, much like how you look at a a magic eye picture and see nothing, but then boom, tree made of penises.

And much like a tree of penises, this game is free to play for a few minutes until the novelty wears thin.

http://progresswars.com/

Making the Most Dangerous Game

The Multimedia Club is attempting to make a first-person shooter video game inspired by Richard Connell’s short story, “The Most Dangerous Game,” using the Unreal engine.

The club has a semester to complete the game with a handful of students using an engine that gives professional game studios trouble.

Multimedia Club President Yale Buckner realizes the challenges at hand but thinks he has just the team to pull it all together.

“It’s that kind of environment that you dream about getting,” said Buckner. “These are people who are actually thirsty to get out into the working world and make something happen.”

The Multimedia Club is developing the currently unnamed game with help from the Fame Club, Programming Club and Dub Club.

Players of the game take on the role of a man who has been marooned on a rainforest island and must fight for survival while being hunted by another character.

Buckner says that they wanted the game to have a more restrained, story-driven style than action games such as Gears of War, which features excess violence and chainsaw bayonet guns.

“If you put chainsaws on guns that shoot chainsaws and bears holding guns that shoot chainsaws, then it becomes a game about bears shooting guns with chainsaws,” said Buckner.

One problem they faced early on even helped to cement their style.

A “boss” character hunts players in the game, but due to technical restraints, according to Level Design Manager Trevor Rice, they could not actually show this character directly.

“So we got really creative," said Rice. "Instead of showing him, we’re trying to design the game around his presence."

This lends the environment a sense of tension, as players hear the boss coming for them or see his shadow.

Buckner, who also acts as the project manager, says they also wanted to try and emulate working conditions at a real game development studio.

This means that the team has already put in 30 man-hours into the project, which is currently 25 percent done according to Buckner.

According to 3-D Manager Joey Cannorata, it can take an entire semester just to render one section of a level.

At the end of the day, though, he says it’s worth it.

“It’s really satisfying,” said Cannorata.

Geek Culture: Understanding MAG

Typically, this column doesn’t run reviews. Mostly because they feel like a cop out and it isn’t too interesting to write or read about how awesome “Kitten Puncher V: The Musical” is.

But games like “MAG” are different. This is a game that I have played for well over 20 hours, and yet I don’t understand. Mostly because, much like “Donnie Darko,” it’s hard to tell what’s intentionally stupid or accidentally stupid.

“MAG” is a multiplayer online shooter for the PS3 that will instantly feel familiar to anyone who’s played “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare” one or two, with players earning experience points with kills and unlocking abilities or equipment with each level.

What sets “MAG” apart is the fact that you can play with 256 players online, which is insane when you realize that there are enough players on your team alone to start a conga line around the earth three times over.

You’ll immediately jump into the game after meticulously creating a soldier that ends up looking like every other square jawed grunt on your team, at which point you will run five feet and get shot by someone you had no chance of seeing.

If you’re like me, this will happen eight times. Occasionally while waiting to spawn the countdown clock will start at twenty, wind down, and then start all over again.

At one point I died and spent the last 10 minutes of the game staring at the clock, wondering what I was supposed to do in video game limbo.

Actually, scratch limbo. If there is a better idea for gamer hell than having a player stare at a clock while waiting to get back into a game after dieing embarrassingly for all eternity, then I’ve never heard it.

Even weirder once was when the clock got to zero and a message popped up telling me that “Aryan_Prince” killed me, with the clock then starting up again.

Apparently Aryan_Prince is so amazing that he killed me and the game didn’t even have enough time to respond. I felt strangely honored.

Other weird problems include dieing and then still being able to walk around the battlefield, finding your body in a strange pose after respawning and even occasionally the PS3 growing a leg and kicking you in the bean bag. I might have made that last one up.

Recently, however, a patch was released that fixed most of these problems. In their place the game now freezes a lot.

I don’t know how to describe how it feels to have a game freeze when you were 10 seconds away from winning a match and leveling up.

Let’s say you sit down to work on a paper for a class. It’s a midterm paper, and you made yourself a cup of coffee before you began.

You eventually make your to the end of it. It’s a great paper. You’re about to hit save and score an easy A when….

Your friend sticks his penis in your coffee.

That’s what it feels like MAG. That’s what it feels like.

Dr. StrangeBuzz or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Inanity.

Social networking. The more of it you do, the less real socializing you get done.
Recently two major developments have happened in the world of Twitter-Facing, with Facebook yet again redesigning their site main site and Google almost simultaneously launching Buzz.
Facebook, much like every website that wants to keep a steady traffic count, updates their site design every now and then.
What I find interesting is that every time they do it you hear users complain about how they “ruined” it, and they usually keep using Facebook anyway until the next update. When they complain again.
Websites constantly tweaking the layout of their pages is a good thing. It’s how they evolve to become more streamlined and more elegantly display content. So just keep that in mind the next time you make your status “lol Facebook sux now!” after it takes you five seconds longer then usual to find the Farmville tab.
More interesting is Buzz, which Google launched to try and further their goal of completely controlling how we communicate on the internet.
Buzz is pretty simple, you just set up a profile with a picture and then post something like a status update, and then people can comment on that. It’s essentially a more streamlined version of a Facebook wall.
Buzz is nothing special really, just a slightly cleaner social site for you to worry about updating.
So why am I writing a GC about it then? Simple. If you’re reading this you have nerd like properties. Your body is most likely rich in Nerdium, and therefore have a decent understanding of the internet.
This is where I show you to use those powers for evil. First thing you do is Buzz something like “Who likes ice cream?” People you follow, still not fully understanding this new service, respond with comments like “I love it!” or “Can’t get enough of it!”
You then go to your original post and hit the edit button, replacing “ice cream” with “rape.”
I have given you this gift. Now go use it.
Dr. StrangeBuzz or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Inanity.

Geek Culture: A few games to wind down with

It’s around the time of year when mid terms rear their ugly misshapen heads, and if you aren’t freaking out about that essay for your economics class, you really should be. A good grade in that one can be the difference between the transfer college of your choice and working as a McDonald’s manager for the rest of your days.

But after you’ve read several thousand pages of text, tattooed crib notes on every surface of your body and memorized facts that will never help you in the real world, how do you wind down? How do you keep your stress in control so your head doesn’t explode in class?

Surprisingly, there are a few games that can help with this. As a master of Geek Jutsu, I’ve played several games that people have described as “relaxing” and judged their effects. Also in consideration of your average students budget, most of these games can either be played free or bought for dirt cheap.

You are probably aware of this thing called Facebook.com, and the thousands of games that have spawned from it. Probably the most prolific is Farmville, a simple farm sim where you can raise crops and manage live stock. The fact that you can’t really lose, or win for that matter, detracts from the enjoyment somewhat. Still, it can be almost therapeutic to manage a plot of virtual land after a hard day of mind flaying.

Peggle is another free game that can be found on myspace.com, yahoo.com, popcap.com, or a million other places on the world wide web. A physics puzzle that plays like a mix between pachinko and pinball, you shoot metal balls at pegs and try to clear the board while racking a high score. The free demo that is on most sites is enough to sate any tired student, with the full game for PC and DS going for around $20.

If you are a red blooded American that needs a little ultra violence, there is Quakelive.com. This is a version of Quake 3 that plays right in your browser, on Mac and PC internet machines. This game is essentially the classic act of shooting people in the face while trying to avoid being shot. After a hard night of cramming, a few rounds of death-matching can be surprisingly cathartic.

Finally, that brings us to Pokemon. Most people my age have fond memories of training pocket monsters to kill each other, and these games are just as relaxing today as they were when we were kids. I recently picked up the DS version used for $20, and you could probably get the earlier Gameboy Advance or Gameboy Color versions for less.

Now get back to studying, future robot war lords of the world!

The Apple iPad and you

Apple finally lifted the veil on their tablet computer, a device which had reached almost mythical levels of fanboy hype through rumor alone.
This wasn’t just a device that would change the face of personal computers, the Apple cults chanted, it would fly in the face of mortal gods and punch them in their pompous kidneys. It had to be, it was Apple and Steve “Messiah” Jobs.
And...it turned out to be the iPad. Which is a giant iPod Touch. That isn’t a joke. Or an insult. It’s exactly what it is.
So let’s just say you are a college student who needs something to take notes on with a decent keyboard, and you just love the Apple. But you need guidance. You need alternatives.
You need...a Geek Culture Expert. That’s where I come in.
I’m not here to tell you not to buy an iPad, I’m just here to let you know what your (cheaper) options are.
The most obvious one would be a laptop, and you can get a decent Macbook for about $1,000 with a 13 inch display without extras. The most expensive iPad will run you $829 with 64GB and $30 a month for 3G from AT&T.
That’s also excluding the keyboard dock, which you’re going to need if you want to type without your hands falling off from the touch screen. So add another $70 to the iPad’s price.
Granted the iPad is still cheaper by a hair, but also keep in mind it can’t run Flash in the web browser or run multiple Apps at once. If you want to be even remotely productive as a student, you need a device that can do those two things.
Go to someplace like Best Buy and you can get a good non-Apple lappy for under $500, which will have enough hardware for all your student needs.
If you’re still dead set on the tablet, you can also go with the cheapest option and get an iPad without 3G and 16GB for $499.
Really, though, you might as well get a Netbook if you’re willing to sacrifice that much functionality.
You can get an Asus Eee PC Netbook for $300 from Best Buy again, and that’s not even the cheapest option. If all you want to do is browse the web and use word, a Netbook is perfect.
I’m not against the iPad. I just think the smart thing to do is wait and see if Apple can update it and implement features that are desperately needed.
It’s name also sounds like a Maxi pad. Either add wings or change the name Jobsy!

Avatar: Insanely good and insanely stupid

Avatar, for a while, looked to be the kind of insanely ambitious film that would put the venerated James Cameron under for good.

The good news is, despite some script problems, it’s such a visually amazing ride that it actually makes good on Cameron’s promise to be the Citizen Kane of 3D films.

The story follows Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) as he takes over for his deceased twin brother in piloting a 10 foot tall alien avatar Na’vi on planet Pandora. What follows after that is essentially what you would expect, a Dances With Wolves with aliens that features Jake turning on his human employers and making sweet, sweet creepy love to Na’vi princess Neytiri (Zoe Saldana).
Avatar is the Citizen Kane of 3D films in the sense that it doesn’t use it as a gimmick. Instead it works together with the mesmerizing special effects to absolutely draw you into the world of Pandora.

Holographic displays jump through the screen, vegetation zooms past the audiences head’s and multilayered sets take on true depth. It enhances every frame in a way that is, to put simply, amazing.

It also helps that the CGI is equally well done. The Na’vi look and act real, with never one texture or animation giving away that you are watching something that isn’t a living creature.

The performances of Worthington and Saldana have a large hand in achieving this, with their facial expressions mapped to their blue characters. While this isn’t a new practice, Avatar is definitely the first movie to get it right, as it feels truly organic and never falls victim to the glassed eye zombie syndrome you see in The Polar Express or Beowulf.

The biggest wrench in the experience is the story and dialogue, which gives us the kind of cheesy lines and plot holes that would bog the experience down in lesser movies.

Also, the reason the big bad military corporation is on Pandora? To harvest a mineral called “unatainium.”

Yes. Seriously. This is a movie with such a ludicrously large budget that nobody could of bothered to pay a decent writer to come up with something better than “unatainium.”

But before you can really reflect on that sample of brain nuking stupidity, you’re flying through the trees again in one of the best movies of the year.

It has a few problems, but Avatar does so many things right you don’t care.

Helen & Troy: The Real Review

Have you ever been to a high school play where there is one guy who doesn’t really act, he just mumbles through his half memorized lines? Doesn’t really have any reason to be there except that he thought it would get him closer to the girl playing Juliet?
Now imagine an entire one act play with every actor being that guy. As well as the writer and director.
You now have a rough idea of what it is like to sit through Helen & Troy, a production that feels so half assed that it borders on having no ass at all.
The actors aren’t actors. They just sort of talk to each other on stage, with no emotion. They sometimes talk slightly louder, as if they have some kind of clue as to what this gosh darn thing called emoting is, but can’t quite figure it out.
Helen is supposed to be drunk, but you would have no way of knowing if the other two on stage didn’t say so. She seriously fails at acting drunk, something 12-year-olds who have never even heard of Vodka know how to at least attempt.
The story focuses on Troy trying to break up with Helen, so he can be with her mother Tina.
It’s not an original story. It’s not an interesting story. It’s a story that exists as a threadbare excuse for drama, drama that isn’t conveyed by the bored zombies on stage.
I had to write a critical review of this for JACC, and I seriously could not find one redeeming quality in this thing. Oh, wait. Helen had a giant ass.

There you go.

Twilight review: Dear lord I tried

It’s a new semester, and with it comes a new staff at the Student Voice.
In addition to this new staff, we have a slew of new columns, such as returning editor Serena Swanger’s Go Green column and Benji Guerrero’s fashion column. Both are pretty damn good. I have a friend who is almost metrosexual, and he tells me that the fashion column is pretty useful.

So, in essence that means I have my work cut out for me. And the only way I could step my game up was to try and watch Twilight.

I should probably elaborate on this point. See if, being an examiner of the “geek culture” means I have to be relatively well versed in a large number of things considered “geeky” or having the chemical composition of “nerd.”

Vampires for a while existed somewhere in this culture, not quite mainstream and yet not quite on the level zombie romantic comedies.

The first Twilight movie changed that. It took the soft vampire romance image that had been introduced in the work of Anne Rice and evolved overtime with books such as Twilight.

So I decided that if I was going to continue making fun of Twilight, I had to make sure it was as bad as it sounded. So, I borrowed a copy of the film from someone on staff, and tried my damn hardest to make it at least 30 minutes before throwing something through the TV.

The first thing you notice about the film is that it stars a girl who’s character is card board thin, so that the teens and tweens watching can project themselves onto her and be the center of attention for vampire and non vampire pretty boys.

You also notice that the supposed vampires in the movie WALK AROUND IN THE FREAKIN DAYLIGHT. Granted it’s not direct sunlight, but that’s still pretty damn blasphemous.

I’m all for reinterpreting classic movie monsters for modern times, but taking out one of the central characteristics? Then it’s no longer a vampire.

I also had heard that when the vampires are in direct sunlight, they glitter instead of bursting into flames. I decided that if I could make it to this point in the movie, I could stop watching. And have visual proof that there is no god.

I made it to this point, and I was literally stunned. If you’ve ever wanted final and definitive proof that Twilight is literary porn for 12-year-old girls, it’s this scene.

So after viewing this insanity and making the horrible images stop by throwing my printer through the screen, I took a moment to reflect on how bad Twilight really is.

It’s undoubtedly an insipid movie that has a protagonist that amazingly has no personality, and yet enough to make you want to hold her head underwater until the bubbles stop.

But, to be fair, it’s no different than any other work that’s just as shallow and geared towards men, such as Transformers 2. Actually I think it’s safe to say that, since there are no racist robots, Twilight is better than Transformers 2.

So, there’s that at least.

Inglourious Basterds Review: Nazi killing for fun and profit

At some point in his career, Quentin Tarantino decided he was done with making
regular movies.
Instead, he developed a crush for making movies about other movies. With Kill Bill it was kung fu and samurai epics, and this carried on into Death Proof as an homage to classic 70 B-movies.
He’s continuing the trend with Inglourious Basterds a film that is a love letter to classic cinema.
Basterds is an intentionally misspelled fantasy WWII movie where a group of American GI Jews, led by Brad Pitt’s Lt. Aldo Raine, infiltrate Nazi occupied France with the goal of killing said Nazi’s in ludicrously graphic ways.
The story is told through separate acts, or vignettes, that focus on the Basterds as they go about terrorizing the Third Reich, as well as a few segments that don’t seem to directly relate with Nazi scalping.
At first this seems to be the fatal flaw of Basterds; the segments give the film a disjointed feeling, and with it a weird flow.
The movie moves past this awkward phase, however, and comes together to form a story that is Tarantino at his best; violent, overblown, and brilliantly hilarious.
The story feels like a modern day propaganda film, with Hitler being exaggerated to the point of being a cartoon character and the Basterds, as cruel as they may be, only doing what their country feels is absolutely necessary.
Featured is also polished writing that revels in long scenes of dialogue that seem to have no point to the main story, reminding us how rare it is to see a scene where two characters just talk amongst each other. No quick cuts. No action. Just dialogue.
Its impossible not to fall in love with Pitt’s Aldo “The Apache” Raine, with his thick Tennessee accent and charismatic gruffness. His speech is even more intense and strangely humorous then what is featured in trailers, and he most definitely gets his scalps.
Christoph Watlz’s Col. Hans Landa is the only other performance worth mentioning, but it’s for a good reason. He absolutely steals the show, showing an energy and aloofness that he manages to maintain even when speaking French, German and Italian. He has an unpredictability to his character that makes one act of violence towards the end downright shocking.
The direction is just as polished as the writing, with Tarantino holding back on the flourishes and dramatically epic shots that would make a movie such as this feel cheap.
It’s important to note the “fantasy” before WII, as this movie has as much historical accuracy as the Lord of the Rings. Tarantino doesn’t take liberties, he takes entire parts of our second World War history and throws them out the window.
Despite this, Inglourious Basterds manages to be one of Quentin Tarantino’s best movies in years.

Geek Culture: A salute to James Whitmore

James Whitmore, veteran actor of the stage and cinema, passed away recently from lung cancer. He was succeeded by his many sons and eight grandchildren.
I’m one of those eight grandchildren. My grandfather had a tremendous influence on our family. His passing was a slow one, as he was ill for 10 weeks after being diagnosed.
It still had a pretty severe impact when he finally left us, but not before the stalwart Obama supporter could watch the inauguration, and remark on how we may finally start getting it right from here on out.
The reason this is a column, and not a tribute article, is the fact that James Whitmore has contributed a great deal to the classic world of science fiction, and it only seemed right that this geek scholar took a minute to recognize that.
He would tell me how he enjoyed his work on the “Twilight Zone”, in an episode called “On Thursday We Leave for Home.” He also had a hand in the original “Planet of the Apes”, where he played the head ape of the assembly. Other then a genuine interest in the script and concept of the film, I honestly believe he took on the role (and grew to loath that decision thanks to some stuffy costume design) to have the opportunity to dress up as a bipedal primate.
Most importantly, he was in the movie that arguably kick started the genre of B movies that focused on mutated insects and animals wreaking havoc on civilized society, the aptly titled “Them”.
In the film a series of gargantuan ants make life difficult, and my grandfather played the soldier type of character who does his damndest to make life difficult for the ants.
The thing that I thought was interesting about my grandfather was that he wouldn’t turn his nose up at script if it had all tell tale signs of science fiction.
He also was one of those actors who never really sold out. He was an Obama supporter because he truly believed the man could bring change, and while a good number of people may know Mr. Whitmore as the Miracle Grow spokesman, he took on that role after discovering a passion for gardening on his own time.
James Whitmore embodied what made early science fiction movies like “Them” and “The Day The Earth Stood Still” so remarkable, an honest examination of mans follies, but with a tinge of optimism for the future.
One of his most memorable sayings, which I believe he said at a Thanksgiving a few years back spent in Mammoth, was “Lord knows we’ve made some mistakes, but I like to think we can change.”
This echoes early sci-fi movies, which condemned us for our use of nukes or reliance on warfare, but usually ended with a step towards realizing a way to abolish these facets of our culture.
It’s possible this was just an idealism that permeated the 50’s after the victory of our involvement with World War II, which eventually fell apart with the Vietnam War and the onset of the 60’s.
James Whitmore never lost that viewpoint however, and that’s why even though there has already been a good deal written about him already, this grandson wanted to honor one of the original kings of science fiction.