DVD | Movies | Netflix

Aliens Invade Los Angeles, Mexico, and Los Angeles

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

[Read more…]

Movies | Video Games

Mass Effect 2: The Screenplay

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.

[Read more…]

Movies

Women Talking To Women About Men

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.)

[Read more…]

Movies | Video Games

The Cloned Cavemen of Future Brooklyn: The Movie

(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.

[Read more…]

Movies | Netflix

The Future Was Then: Freejack

For decades, filmmakers have looked ahead to the 21st Century, imagining it as a time of wonder and technological advancement. And here we are, wading balls-deep in the very future they so fervently imagined. The Future Was Then will examine various filmmakers’ visions and predictions of a future that we are now living in, and see how they stack up against reality.

Our first film is Freejack, the 1992 Emilio Estevez time-travel film that takes place in the distant, futuristic world of 2009. Keep in mind, I’ll just be looking objectively at the predictions the filmmakers, not actually reviewing the film itself, though it should be noted that the film in this case completely sucks.

[Read more…]

DVD | e-Books | Movies | Television | Video Games

On The Menu: Nazi Dinosaurs, Medieval Stoners, and Norm!

As I’m typing this week’s menu, I’m sitting in a cafe across from two young people clearly on a first date. Man, I’m so glad I’m not single anymore. The mid-day coffee date is the worst date ever. Even if things totally work out, both people have horrible coffee breath and it’s the middle of the afternoon (on a Sunday, in this case). Luckily for these two, it is clearly not working out, though they’re both trying to pretend it is. I feel like I should pull a gun and rob the cafe, if only to give them an excuse to cut the date short.

This cafe also appears to be a prime spot for divorced couples to swap out their shared children. So, this whole place is incredibly depressing.

Anyway, here’s what’s coming to screens this week!

[Read more…]