DVD | Television | Video Games

Monday Night Menu

April 11, 2011 by Christopher

Quick recap of Sunday night’s entertainment:

We watched episode 2 of The Killing. With an entire season devoted to one case, the information is coming in at a leisurely trickle, which is good, though I admit I’m already impatient for more. I sort of wish we’d missed the season, waited until it was out on DVD, and rented it so we could consume it big, multi-episode gulps (The Wire was much more satisfying that way). Still, it’s very good, and it’s devoting a lot of time to the family of the deceased and how they’re trying to cope, which is both painful to watch and extremely rare for television to show. Generally, the only time you see the reaction of the family of a murder victim is when they’re informed of the murder, and they cry a little, and they mention “She used to hang out with this kid down the street” and then the investigation shifts away from them, until maybe you see them in the courtroom at the end.

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Internet

From “Beautiful Screaming Lady” to “Cat In Danger”

April 11, 2011 by Christopher

This is a neat Flickr series showing some of the differences between the 1963 version of Richard Scarry’s “Best Word Book Ever” and the 1991 edition.

If you look through the images, you’ll see some forward progress: Dad has been added into the kitchen along with Mom, there are more female animals sharing jobs with the males, and all of the stereotypical Native American references have been removed.

For further reading, here’s a nice analysis of Scarry’s “What Do People Do All Day?” I loved these books as a kid.

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Television

Sunday Night Menu (TV)

April 10, 2011 by Christopher

The Killing: The excellent two-hour premiere is airing again, followed by a new episode in this season-long murder mystery, featuring a teenager killed in the woods near Seattle and the two detectives who are tasked with solving the crime. The show has its share of cliches: one detective is weary and seasoned and a day from transferring to another city, the other is a rookie, formerly a vice cop, and has questionable methods. Still, it all works and it’s a breath of fresh air when compared to most murder-of-the-week shows. In other words, it’s closer to The Wire than CSI. (AMC)

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Internet | Movies | Netflix | Television

Stream Cuisine: The Best Stuff on Netflix Instant

April 8, 2011 by Christopher

Mitchell & Webb

Netflix, I’m convinced, is the greatest invention of all time. It took a tedious, nigh-impossible chore — going to a video store, picking out a movie, coming home, watching it, and then going back to the store to return it — and made it as easy as ticking a box on the internet and opening and closing an envelope.

Naturally, opening and closing that envelope become too much goddamn work, so Netflix quickly reinvented the greatest invention of all time, and came up with Netflix Instant, which lets you strean movies and TV shows on your PC and TV just moments after you decide you want to watch them.

The catalog of streaming entertainment isn’t entirely fantastic, but it’s constantly growing and changing, so from time to time I’ll post about the better stuff I’m watching, so you can watch it (in the U.S., at least) if you haven’t already.

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Television

Coming Up: Coupons. Now: Coupons. Previously: Coupons.

April 7, 2011 by Christopher

I want to talk about my unabashed love for the television show Extreme Couponing (actually, I sort of don’t because I’m horribly embarrassed about it) but first I need to talk about my unrestrained hatred for the annoying habit some TV shows have of constantly showing you what is coming up next before they go to the commercial break, then showing you the thing they’ve told you is coming up, and then recapping that same exact thing again after the next commercial break.

This practice means you see certain moments of the show three times. With commercials, a half-hour show is only 22 minutes long, so if you’re repeating half the scenes three times, you might want to consider that you don’t have quite enough content for a show. Or, maybe it’s that the producers don’t think we can manage to pay attention through a two minute commercial break. Thanks for the vote of confidence.

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DVD | Movies | Netflix

Aliens Invade Los Angeles, Mexico, and Los Angeles

April 7, 2011 by Christopher

Aliens! They be invadin’ all the time. Am I right? Ladies, back me up on this.

I’ve seen three alien invasion movies in the past month or so: Skyline, Battle: Los Angeles, and Monsters, but before we get to them I want to highlight a few things about alien invasion movies in general.

There are three main rules that make up most alien invasion films:

1) The aliens have a poorly conceived attack plan
2) The aliens go door-to-door looking for humans (there are billions of us and we have a bunch of doors: this is gonna take a while)
3) The aliens have a glaring weakness that humans can exploit

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Movies | Video Games

Mass Effect 2: The Screenplay

April 6, 2011 by Christopher

Okay, Hollywood, listen up. There are three things nerds have wanted for a while: good movies based on comic books, good movies based on fantasy novels, and good movies based on video games.

I’ll give you this: after some early struggles, you’ve finally made some decent comic book movies, like Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Iron Man (the first one), Spider-Man (the first two), and maybe one-and-a-half of the X-Men films.

Plus, you scored twin dunkers with The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Harry Potter and the Blankity Blank sevenilogy. Or eightilogy. Whatever.

But good movies based on video games? In my opinion, you haven’t cracked the code. You’ve given us crap like Doom, Hitman, Prince of Persia, Max Payne, and Streetfighter. Where’s our good movie, the one we can point to and say, “Hey, this doesn’t suck too bad!”

You need help, and I am qualified to provide it due to the following facts:

1) I have played some games
2) I sort of remember some stuff about them
3) I wrote the stuff down in screenplay form

You’re welcome. Please note, Hollywood, that if you haven’t played this game yet, there are spoilers.

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Movies

Women Talking To Women About Men

April 6, 2011 by Christopher

The Bechdel Test for films is simple. To pass, a film has to have:

1) At least two women in it
2) who talk to each other
3) about something besides a man

Sounds easy enough, but I guess it’s a little too much to ask of Hollywood, because even a cursory glance at The Bechdel Test website demonstrates that roughly half of the films in their database don’t pass. The test’s origins lie in Alison Bechdel’s comic Dykes to Watch Out For, specifically a strip she drew in 1985 called The Rule. (You can read more about it on TV Tropes, and you can also watch a short video about the test here.)

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Movies | Video Games

The Cloned Cavemen of Future Brooklyn: The Movie

April 6, 2011 by Christopher

(The following post originally appeared on my old gaming blog, The First-Person Shouter)

If you follow my Twitter, you already know I’m very excited about a game called Merchants of Brooklyn. [Edit: it’s now called Drug Wars.] Here are some excepts from the game’s description:

In 3100 A.D., global warming has caused the sea level to rise and engulf the streets of Brooklyn. The land is gone, but society rebuilds the city on top of existing structures, connecting buildings through a network of sky bridges…

To meet the upper city’s demand for laborers, city leaders contract the Brooklyn Institute of Technology (B.I.T.) to clone a new working class…. Neanderthals were chosen as the main focus of the research based on their physical resilience. The city’s contract called for far more Neanderthal clones than were required, causing the excess and sub-standard Neo-Neanderthals to be discarded to the dregs of the city…

…You take the role of an elite Neanderthal fighter with a taste for blood. Having had your arm unwillingly detached from your body courtesy of a chainsaw, your new prototype biomechanical arm transforms into different twisted and brutal weaponry to aid you in the slaughter…

That is quite simply the most awesome description of a game I’ve ever read. It’s so fucking awesome I don’t even dare check out the game itself, because in no way could it ever live up to that description. I can’t look at screenshots or videos or read reviews or anything that might take away from the perfect concept of cloned cavemen building sky bridges in future Brooklyn. No matter what the game actually is, it will never equal the images flooding through my brain.

But I want to do something with this game, so, I’m going to take the only logical step left: I’m going to write a screenplay for the movie adaptation of Merchants of Brooklyn.

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Internet | Video Games

Four Letter Words

April 5, 2011 by Christopher

I’m currently addicted to Swipe Four, an iPod/iPhone game. You can try it in your brower for free here, and it’s on sale in the App Store for $1.99, easily worth it if you like word games.

Make four letter words until you’ve filled the four by four grid, then move on to progressively harder levels (seriously, what am I supposed to do with three Y’s and a K?) I made it to 40th on the leaderboard one day, but it’s not unusual I get the message “You’ve placed 1,855th!” Like I’m supposed to be proud of that.

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