Saturday, September 23, 2006
News Round-Up: 9/23/06
Do what makes you money! Or at least that seems to be the core of these two pieces of news.
In an effort to rake in even more money. the Empire that Walt Built will be releasing another movie based on a ride which would make it number five after Pirates of the Caribbean 1 & 2, Haunted Mansion, and Country Bears (which apparently Depp made them forget). This will be based on Disney's Jungle Cruise. For the benefit of someone who hasn't gone on this ride, I went twice as a kid. You get in a boat and watch animatronic animals and occasionally get sprayed. All this while being forced to listen to the boat pilot's "witty" banter. Yes, it's every bit as fun as it sounds."The executive producers of the TV show "Smallville" are in discussions to write the script. The movie will be set in the 20th century, but plot details remain unknown."
Give me The African Queen and you can keep this dreck. POTC was a fluke, but I guess it could have been worse. They could have chosen the Enchanted Tiki Room or *shudder* It's a Small World. I still have flashbacks.
Source: ThrillNetwork
Lionsgate will be making Atlas Shrugged into a movie. This project has been talked about for quite some time and in this latest incarnation Angelina Jolie has signed on to play Dagney Taggart (Dagney? Who the hell names their kid Dagney?).For those of you who are unfamiliar with the plot, "The story follows two characters, Taggart and maverick steel magnate Hank Reardon, as their respective industries are threatened by growing government interference and the mysterious disappearance of key industrial leaders. What happens when the country's thousand smartest, most productive, and most inventive people are removed from society? What happens to the world if Atlas shrugs?"
As I understand it it's all about promoting Ayn Rand's particular philosophy of "Objectivism", which includes such beliefs as "Existence exists." Faaaascinating. At 1100 pages I just can't wait to miss whatever this ends up looking like.
Source: FilmForce
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Friday, September 22, 2006
This'll Be The Last Superman DVD Story We Post, We Swear
Here we go again. Further to the last two stories we did about forthcoming Superman DVDs, we now hopefully have the final word on all things Krypton this year, with the final dish on the huge Superman boxset, once a rumour, now a reality apparently.
According to uber-DVD site The Digital Bits, Superman: The Ultimate Collector's Edition will span a massive fourteen discs, with all five Superman films and oodles of bonus material. Here's the checklist, along with the set in legs akimbo mode:
- Superman: The Movie - Special Edition (four discs)
- Superman II: Special Edition (two-discs)
- Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut
- Superman III: Deluxe Edition
- Superman IV: The Quest For Peace - Deluxe Edition
- Superman Returns: Special Edition (two discs)
- Three bonus discs including Look Up In The Sky and You Will Believe: The Cinematic Saga of Superman documentaries, and Bryan Singer's video journals.
All of that and a fancy tin to hold it all. Release date is November 28, the price a hefty $99.92. With the inclusion of Superman Returns, this obviously is different to the Christopher Reeve Collection, but with this set now announced, who knows if that'll still be released.
Source: The Digital Bits
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"Spaceballs?! Oh shit, there goes the network."
Way back in 1987, Mel Brooks made a little parody film called Spaceballs that poked fun at some existential indie claptrap. I think it was called Galaxy Battles, or something like that. Now, almost twenty years later, Dark Helmet, Lonestarr, Barf and Dot Matrix are returning, but thankfully not in some kind of shoddy prequel.
According to CNN (how much more official can you get?), Mel Brooks is developing Spaceballs : The Animated Series for the somewhat maligned G4 network.
"Like the 1987 movie, which parodied well-known science-fiction movies, "Spaceballs: The Animated Series" will spoof current blockbusters as well as every genre of entertainment from movies and reality TV to culture and politics.
It is set to debut on cable network G4 in fall 2007. Production has already started on an initial batch of 13 episodes.
Brooks, who will voice two characters in the show, co-wrote the pilot with longtime collaborator Thomas Meehan, who will oversee all writing for the series."
Okay, maybe Brooks hasn't been completely on top of his game in recent years, but Spaceballs remains one of my favorites from his body of work. Sure, it's broad, relentless parody and slapstick, but it was pretty damn funny. Still, I'm leery of the idea of these character returning so far down the road to parody current blockbusters. Is this going to end up like some kind of Family Guy meets Scary Movie thing? I hope not, because that would probably kill most of the Western hemisphere instantly upon broadcast.Still, with the original writing duo of Spaceballs both on board, maybe some of the old Brooks magic can resurface, and we'll get something funny and worthwhile from this endeavor. Here's to hoping they can nab as many of the original actors to voice returning characters as possible. Yes, even John Candy. No, I don't care if he's dead.
Source: CNN, Doug Slack
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Thursday, September 21, 2006
Trailer: 300
The promo trailer for 300 has arrived.
Click on the picture to download and watch it, but no matter what, you want to watch it now.
Trailers are deceiving objects all too often. What could turn out to be a wretched film might emerge a glorious pearl of celluloid. Of course what could be a grand and inspirational trailer could also be the death of the film for you, as your expectations will have been raised far too high for you to expect anything less than a giant beam of fluorescence to pour from the theater screen and give you an astral orgasm. That or the film just blows.
It's the reason why you always see internet writers give the incredulous phrase "I'll save judgment until theaters, but it looks okay." It's about the safest thing you could ever say when judging a trailer. You'll seem fair and neutral, and when the movie actually hits and it suddenly seems like a piece of fossilized feces, you can wave your arms about wildly and proclaim, "I KNEW IT!" It's one of those famous internet discussion safety moves, worthy of a commentator screaming it over a microphone at a packed stadium.
With that said I'm going to give a firm thumbs up to this and say that it's going to be at least good, if not great.
If you didn't already know, 300 is the story of the Battle of Thermopylae, where 300 Spartan guard lead by King Leonidas held back the tide of an invading Persian army led by Xerxes I. The film is an adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel based off the battle, which created an extraordinary tone to the actual historical event. It's being directed by Zack Snyder, the man who remade Dawn of the Dead. I did not see the remake nor the original, as I am cultural retard when it comes to the Horror genre, but as I understand it hardcore Romero fans didn't want to lynch Snyder afterwards. So I'm guessing it turned out at least okay.
The promo trailer features quite a look at the upcoming flick. Probably the most important aspect being the visual dynamic that it presents. Snyder had been developing a new technique that would essentially make the film look like a moving painting in some respects, and very little of it being actual scenery. Along with that he had mentioned he was going to go for a more techno rock score for the whole film. Ultimately, it creates an epic historical movie that has very little in common with the epic historical movies we have come to know. It's refreshing, and I don't think it's as clumsy or distracting as the direction Rodriguez and Miller ended up taking with Sin City.
Also, if anyone is going into this expecting a historically accurate telling, you will be very disappointed. From what I understand Miller's book is far from it, and is more in the vein of being a mythological retelling. Just by looking at the trailer you can tell that. For one thing the Spartans were famous for their heavy armor and weren't exactly running around greased up in leather undies and capes. However, the look of it adds to the raw brutality of combat, and makes it a lot more as if the soldiers are these glorious primal animals.
That sounds a lot gayer than I intended.
Along with the look and tone, the film has a good cast. I have renewed faith in Gerard Butler (he was in Reign of Fire!) when I saw him in Beowulf and Grendel recently. The film itself was a bit lacking and silly sometimes, but Butler turned in an entertaining performance that had a good bit of charisma to it. Along with Butler you have a strong cast supporting him, like David Wenham of Lord of the Rings fame and Dominic West, who most of our TFLers will love because he plays the sarcastic asshole of a detective McNulty in The Wire.
The trailer had first appeared on iFILM until it was pulled. I suggest watching the trailer over and over again much like I did, which would be the reason this news piece did not arrive until well after the trailer was posted on the grand interwebs.
300 is released on March 9th of next year. I will see it, as it will be required of me by the Big Fat Geek Clause of 1989.
Source: iFILM, Internets
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DVD Invasion - Week Of 9/19/06
Remember last week when I said that the DVD train was going to get rolling full steam in a few weeks for the pre-Christmas push? No? Well I said it, and it's still at least one week away, so just chill out for a few days, maybe throw some of the following titles in your online rental queue or go old school and take a trip to the video store. There are a few mild-to-heavy temptations this week, but the real spending will come later. Read on and find out what's what...
Stay AliveThese days, the best way to make a bad movie is to do one based on a video game. Between the woefully inept efforts of Director Ewe Boll (whom I semi-affectionately call "Gooey Balls") and the French guy who made the visually interesting but soulless adaptation of Silent Hill, the once viable market for the video game movie is getting embarrassing. With Stay Alive, we have a double disaster scenario: a movie based on a video game that doesn't exist. Did we learn nothing from the 1994 opus Brainscan, starring Terminator 2's Eddie Furlong?
This one features another young male star, Frankie Muniz of Malcolm in the Middle fame. Frankie's character (named Swink Sylvania, lordy) and a few of his fellow gamers get caught up with the online video game of the title after a friend of theirs dies a bizarre death. The game pits them against a digital being named the Blood Countess, a stand-in for real-life historical figure Elizabeth Bathory. As the group plays the game, they begin to realize that dying in the game means dying in real life as well, in the same gory manner even. The kids who don't die early must defeat the Blood Countess to win the game and stay alive, which they all would have done if they hadn't started playing the game in the first place. I don't know about you, but I'm going to find a copy of The Last Starfighter .
WHAT, NO FUCKING GOD MODE? features include a commentary track by Director William Brent Bell, a visual effects reel and interactive menus that let you build up your chosen character as you click through the menus. This unrated director's cut is presented in anamorphic widescreen and contains 16 minutes of footage that wasn't included in the theatrical release. The rated edition is also available with the same special features, but it's a fullscreen-only version so, you know, piss on that.
Stick ItAre you telling me to "stick it", movie? Huh? You wanna step outside, bitch? Cause I'm ready to beat your ass in. Yeah, that's what I thought.
Sorry, there's something about this movie that brings out the Neanderthal in me. I'm probably just jealous because I can't even do a cartwheel. What you've got here is Bring It On with lots of extra flipping. Headstrong Haley Graham (played by Missy Peregrym of the short-lived TV series Life As We Know It) is a sassy teen gymnast-turned petty criminal who once walked away from her team during a meet, costing them a championship. When Haley is given the choice of going back into a gymnastics program or heading for the juvey clink, she decides to give the tumbling mat another shot. Enter coach Burt Vickerman (Jeff Bridges of The Big Lebowski, Starman), an instructor who thinks he can mold Haley into a team player again, if only her suspicious teammates will give her a chance. Will Haley learn to play nice with others and regain her confidence? Will she be able to "stick it" at the nationals?
Insert your own American Anthem reference here.
SEVERE BALANCE BEAM RASH features include:
* Buttaharas: Outrageous bloopers & outtakes
* Skinny Fat: Hilarious deleted scenes with two optional commentaries
* Missy Elliott music video: "We Run This"
* Jeannie Ortega featuring Papoose Music video: "Crowded"
* Hard Corps: The real gymnasts who were stunt doubles for Stick It
* The Elites: Full gymnastics routines performed by some of the world's best with optional commentary
* The Judges' Table: Uneven bar routines in slow motion with optional commentary
* Read My Mind: Multiple feature commentaries - director and actors, director and filmmakers.
Hard CandySome movies are designed to push society's buttons. Hard Candy sounds like the kind of film that wants to push all of the known buttons and then create more buttons to push along the way. What starts out as a validly creepy tale of internet pedophilia turns into something much more disturbing, if you can imagine that. 32-year-old Jeff Kohlver (played by Patrick Wilson of Phantom of the Opera) meets and develops an online relationship with a 14-year-old girl named Hayley Stark (Ellen Page of X-Men: The Last Stand). When Hayley suggests to Jeff that they should meet in person, Jeff cannot resist. This sets up an opportunity for the manipulative adult to take advantage of the unknowing adolescent, right? No. Very, very wrong. You see, Hayley isn't the prey in this scenario. She's the predator, and Jeff will pay dearly for his ignorance of chatroom etiquette. Everyone knows the first rule of chatting is Do Not Fuck Children.
PIN THE TAIL ON THE DONG features include two commentary tracks by (a)Director David Slade and Writer Brian Nelson and (b)Actors Patrick Wilson and Ellen Page, deleted and extended scenes, a "Creating Hard Candy" featurette, a "Controversial Confection" mini-featurette, a DVD-ROM production notebook and a trailer.
Battlestar Galactica: Season 2.5I picked up season 1 and the first half of season 2 of this series partially on a whim and partially due to the relentless coaxings of friends and associates. All I can say is "Thanks guys for the good advice" and "Thanks me for being such a complete DVD whore." This show is amazing. I'm sorry Stargate SG-1 fans, this is the premiere sci-fi series of the new millenium. Everything that was kitschy and corny about the original late 70's TV series has been stripped away and replaced with serious and dramatic storylines, characters with flawed but believable personalities and kinetic, exciting camera work, especially during the outerspace scenes. I can't be the only person to be shocked that the Sci-Fi Channel is able to pull off a show of this high quality, but they have.
I have no gripes about the show itself, but I'm not exactly thrilled that season 2 was broken into two separate releases. I can see the value in getting half of the season into the rental market early to draw new viewers and customers, but we end up paying 50 percent more for the two releases than we might have paid for one complete set. And I really don't have room for a lot more TV box sets in my crowded office/library, but that's a personal issue so I'll shut up now.
STARBUCK DOESN'T HAVE NARDS! features include an exclusive extended version of the midseason cliffhanger episode "Pegasus," deleted scenes, podcasts and several producer's video logs: "On the Set of the New 'Pegasus'," "The Magic of Battlestar Galactica," "Never Let the Inmates Run the Asylum," "Scenes From a Video Blog Floor" and "Sex, Lies and a Video Blog."
The Fine Print:
The two Criterion releases above look wildly interesting, as have so many of their projects over the years, which further supports my contention that the fine men and women there should adopt me. The award for worst DVD collection this week goes to two sets, the Chucky: Killer Collection that doesn't include the first movie (which is the only one of the bunch that offered any scares, and is only available in a featureless fullscreen edition) and the Henry Fonda Signature Collection that isn't even half-filled with the man's best films. Both sets suffer from studio isolationism. The first Child's Play movie is distributed by MGM, while the rights to the others belong to Universal. The Fonda Box was produced by Warner Bros., but many of Fonda's best movies, including many of his classic westerns, are owned by other companies. It's a real shame that inferior sets like these get released when a little cooperation between the studios could make them so much better. Oh well, I guess there's always Grease.
Coming next week: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2-Disc Ultimate Edition, Lady Vengeance, The Stephen King Collection (including collector's editions of The Dead Zone and Pet Semetary, as well as regular editions of Silver Bullet and Graveyard Shift) and many others.
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Superman II: The Cover You Never Wanted To See
As you may have seen earlier, the cool peeps at DVD Active came through with the official art and specs for Warner Bros. forthcoming Superman Returns disc, and the general consensus was that it was terrible. But if you thought that was bad, wait until you see what Warner's marketing department have come up with for Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut. Click the above picture and get ready to vomit in terror.
As my good friend Katanga said in IM when I showed him the cover, WHAT. THE. FUCK. I mean, seriously. This is one of the most anticipated "director's cuts" of all time, something we've been waiting to see since 1982 when we saw parts of a damn good movie intercut with footage that seemed like it was directed by Groucho Marx. The least they could have done is give it a shiny foil cover with the logo, like they did with the original Superman boxset. But no.
What kills me is that it looks like a bootleg. Like one of those uber-cheap "LEGENDARY SUPERHEROES" DVDs that always come out at the same time as a big-budget superhero flick is released in theaters, and are usually comprised of interviews with Stan Lee and clips of the Nicholas Hammond Spider-Man TV show and the old Columbia Batman serials. Hell, it would look ten times better with a proper font, as opposed to a squashed Arial Black.
Oh well. Let's hope this isn't a sign of what the actual movie will be like. Superman II: TRDC will include a commentary by Richard Donner and Tom Manciewicz, and a featurette on restoring the movie, and is released on November 28.
Source: DVD Active
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Trailer: Bobby
So the news here is for the just released full trailer of the upcoming Robert F. Kennedy drama entitled Bobby. The bigger news is that it stars practically every single actor known to man. The biggest news is that apparently Emilio Estevez is not only still alive, but back to writing and directing movies. Relevant movies!
Not since Men at Work have I been this shocked and excited.
Robert F. Kennedy, younger brother of former president John F. Kennedy, was known for a great deal of things, but probably most importantly, for his aid and contributions to the Civil Rights movement of African Americans in the early 1960s. He, along with his brother and later President Lyndon B. Johnson, effectively helped to create the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which finally brought an end to the Jim Crow laws that had been in effect in the South for nearly one hundred years.Then he was shot, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California on June 5th of 1968 by Sirhan B. Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian with a .22 caliber revolver. Kennedy died the next day.
So what is Estevez aiming for with this film? Essentially the above, except the story will revolve around twenty-two people that were there present at the Ambassador Hotel the day Kennedy was shot. Among those twenty-two are the following:
The history and event is known, but how it affects the lives of the people depicted in the trailer will be the thing to see if Emilio's script can pull off. The trailer gave off a more off-beat, melancholic tone (I could've sworn it was Jon Brion when I first heard that music) than I would've expected for a story that's bouncing off of the events of the 60s, but it was certainly interesting nevertheless.
Also, I believe Elijah Wood's sideburns are MOTHERFUCKING ALIVE.
Bobby hits theaters on November 17th.
Source: Yahoo! Movies
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Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Geek Pin-Up #10: Kim Basinger
Welcome. It's high time for another look at how desperate we are to prove we're manly men and perfectly heterosexual, in the form of a bunch of us staring at photos of unreachable women on the internet. Kim Basinger isn't necessarily the geekiest pin-up, especially compared to some of our past subjects, but there was a time when almost every red-blooded male in both hemispheres would have given his right leg to spend 9 and a half minutes with Her Sultryness, so I'd say she's earned her place. Be warned, there's one picture which might be considered NSFW by your uptight boss, despite the fact that the average car commercial features nude but-tocks.
Basinger came on the scene very near the time when most of the geeks here (myself very much included) were just hitting puberty. Her first major film was Never Say Never Again, but the level of beauty and sensuality she could bring wasn't fully realized until 9 1/2 Weeks.
I don't think that there are too many of us that have seen it that actually remember the plot, but the sex between her and Rourke are indelibly printed on my brain. It was all about the sex, which described the characters' relationship perfectly. I never looked at an ice cube or an alleyway the same way again. It also starred a kid who could fart the theme to Jaws, or at least the first bar. That plus a Playboy shoot in the same year showed the world what she had to offer.
The first legal and family friendly thing I saw her in was My Stepmother is an Alien, and it's amazing that she immediately switched from treating the contents of a refrigerator as lingerie to this cornball family film. She switches gears again to play Vicki Vale in Batman. Say what you will about this film, but I think it gets a lot of things right. I'm not sure that one of those things was choosing Kim to play a famous photojournalist, but she has a scene where she turns the heat on the Joker and the smile nearly cuts his head off.
In spite of Batman's success, the early part of the nineties isn't exactly filled with mega-hits for her. Cool World was quirky and let her use her sex appeal to good effect playing both the real world and the animated Holly Would, alongside Brad Pitt, but she was a streamingly-hot success in the underrated Wayne's World 2, which let her play with the sexy older woman role who relieved Garth of his virginity as well as his common sense. But nothing else brought her any notoriety until 1997 and L.A. Confidential.
In it she played a high class whore who looked like Veronica Lake. Basinger surprised everyone by managing to portray the absolute glamour of golden era Hollywood, the scheming deviousness of Hollywood's ruthless underbelly and the vulnerability of a girl from Bisbee, Arizona trying to find love in a dangerous world, all at the same time. Her beautiful face, masked in perfect pale make-up to try and cover the first cracks of aging, is the defining image of this fantastic depiction of lies and corruption in the city of angels.
This decade has brought a series of roles that show me that the fifty plus year old actress is still beautiful and still very much in the game, including playing Eminem's mom. Hollywood is harder on women as they age, but she has done so gracefully and I hope I continue to see more from her in the future. And I couldn't think of a better end to this tribute to a blonde bombshell than by showing you hers (wow, that was awful - Charlie).
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The First Rule About Mission: Impossible 4 Is That You Don't Talk About Mission: Impossible 4
According to The Guardian, Brad Pitt's name is being shuffled around as the next guy to play super spy Ethan Hunt's super spy replacement in the next Mission: Impossible films. This isn't really much of a story, it's mostly conjecture, hell, what movie producer doesn't want Pitt to be in their movie? He's hunky, talented, and doesn't worry about how his phaetons are aligned. But just because it's a rumor, doesn't mean we can't make fun of Tom Cruise.
This move, even just the discussion of it, brings up a few huge points, and underscores just how damn big Paramount's decision to ditch Cruise was; the M:I films made a lot of money (well, the third one not-so-much, thus leading to the Cruise Culling™), and now that they kicked him out, they're going to need to find a new Big Star to fill his shoes. So they look around, and instead of attempting to create a new star from a new original great movie, they say "Hey, what's Brad Pitt doing? No, I know he's in Africa, but what's he [i]doing[/i].... Yeah, well fuck the kids, you think he could be in our movie?... I dunno, whatever one. He was in that spy lover thing...yeah yeah, that one, we could do one like that.... Um..let's see, we could patch him into that thing we have, the DePalma one with the dangling from the ceiling and the motorcycle jumping stuff.... Whatever, I'm not paid to know names, I'm paid to make art!" and so on and so on.
So they try and move on with a this franchise, a franchise that has been declining rapidly ever since the first film. In the article, they mention two key things, one is that they don't want this to be Pitt (or whoever) taking the role of Ethan Hunt over, but they want to introduce a new spy to the mix, the other, similar to the first one, is that they want to use this as a chance to reinvent the franchise. Now that's the key. As it was, Cruise had way too much control over the production of those films. By the end, they were complete vanity projects, he basically seemed to be directing them at times, so a reinvention with a new actor is completely necessary, assuming that anyone really cares enough about these movies to want them to continue, but is Pitt that actor? Probably not, as it would open the possibility for the same problem to happen, making a Brad Pitt movie instead of a Mission: Impossible movie is just continuing the cycle with a different name.
And honestly, with the Bourne films being as great as they are, and a genuinely good actor filling 007's tuxedo, why should anyone really care about any other spy-action franchises, especially those as lacking as the recent Impossibles have been?
Source: The Guardian
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Review: Severance
Severance is a new horror-comedy from England that is being sold with a tasty quote claiming the film is 'as witty as Shaun of the Dead, as scary as The Descent'. It's neither. It's also simply not as good as those films. It's showing internationally at festivals at the moment where it is getting generally good responses, so before those turn into Internet hype and ruin what actual joy there is in this film with inflated expectations, take a step back, breathe deeply, and relax. I'll start with the good bits...
The film does have some decent horror business to give you. There's a leg caught in a man-trap that leads to an ongoing series of gags that are pretty fun and there's a knife-up-an-arsehole sequence that, amazingly, isn't spoiled by me telling you it's going to happen. It made me say 'Oh shit!' very loudly in the cinema for which alone I should probably give this film a positive review.
I'm not going to though.
Here's the set up of the film: a bunch of English office workers go to Hungary for a team-building weekend of paintballing and orienteering. The Hungarian coach driver refuses to take them down a particular road so they start walking, get lost, find a run down old house and then start getting picked off by a bunch of psychos hidden in the woods.
We are introduced to the inneffectual manager, the spliff smoking wide-boy, the oxbridge arsehole, the eager-to-please geek, the nice English lady, the very attractive American lady and the nice black man. You're already narrowing down who's going to get killed, and you'll mostly be right.
The one added twist to this is that they work for an arms manufacturer, which is used for some easy digs at arms manufacturers at the beginning and some plot later on.
The clunky attempts at satire (think Robocop without the bite) mark out the film as a low achiever right from the get go, and the character introductions are never more than competant. You get their basic charcater types and their basic relatioships with each other. It's effective enough but it never has the accuracy of Shaun's characters, the easy chemistry of the teens in An American Werewolf in London, nor even the extreme characterisations of films like Hostel.
If a movie succeeds in making you accept the group of people you are following, even though you know the genre of the film you are watching, you will find yourself not wanting the 'horror' things to happen and be surprised and shocked when they do. Here, when a character starts talking about a severed head still being conscious, you get the deflating feeling of knowing exactly what is about to happen to them. When, on their first night in the abondoned house, the director is already resorting to loud-noise jump scares, walking slowly down dark corridors and fake-out dream sequences, you know you are watching a horror made strictly by the numbers.
But much worse than that, the film-makers seem to have little understanding of how comedy and horror fit together. Most of the movie consists of straight comedy scenes followed by straight horror scenes. Apart from being lazy writing, it actually undermines either effect.
Take the ineffectual manager for example: When faced with a crisis he gets stroppy, makes bad decisions and makes threats to hide his insecurities. In a comedy these failings are funny, but in a horror film the audience will take them far more seriously. He is acting like a tyrant and he is leading them towards death. So when the character acts like a buffoon in a later scene purely for comic effect, it just doesn't work. No-one is laughing, leaving the actor to flail about in silence.
Or the scene where the nice English lady gets it. Here is a chance for the film-makers to up the ante and show that they have serious horror-balls. The nice lady doesn't deserve to be killed. The nice lady is your mum. Killing the nice lady in a serious and and gruesome fashion will terrorise the audience to the point of being completely in the film-makers' hands. Instead they go for some silly business with matches that won't light and a cheesily oversized flamethrower. It isn't funny, and it isn't scary.
It also isn't that gory. The kill, as with most of the kills, is not shown. Mostly we get the aftermath, almost never the event. Here we see the flamethrower throwing flames at the camera and then we get a white out.
The film seems to be holding back. It's never willing to show the really disgusting stuff because it thinks that will stop it being funny and it never builds up any real momentum of laughter because it is constantly dropping in scenes of un-ironic, if not that successful, horror.
I (and the audience I was with) never got to that gasping sort of laughter when the film-maker has made something truly terrible absolutely hilarious. Like the rape in Miike's Visitor Q, the flying eyeball in Evil Dead 2 or, for that matter, Vincent Vega accidentally shooting the kid sitting in the back of his car.
The knife in the arsehole is close, and there is another gag involving a brand new rocket launcher that it is in such poor taste it would be worthy of applause if I thought it was deliberately so. However it's either a piece of random silliness or, more likely and far worse, it's an attempt at making some satirical point about the relationship between arms manufacturers and terrorists. The film this fumbling can not suddenly think it can make serious statements. I won't let it.
Low budget genre films are often hucksterish and surrounded by blatantly untrue claims as to their qualities and ambitions. It's part of their charm. This film's belief that it has something to say is patronising. Its hubris in thinking it can move beyond mere horror-comedy and reach pointed satire is entirely uncharming. As it is it does not even achieve horror-comedy.
A character shoots a seemingly dead baddie in the head and says something to the effect of 'well I wouldn't want them coming back later' in a nod to the killer-not-being-really-dead cliche in a lot of horror movies. Subtle piece of meta-humour or sub-Scream attempt at cleverness? You tell me.
It doesn't even look that good. At least The Descent, once it gets onto the cave is legitimately cinematic. This looks and feels like a tv-movie. Director Christopher Smith has made one other horror movie and directed some British TV. Perhaps he is truly passionate about horror, but this feels like another middle-class media type playing at horror because he knows he can get the budget for it.
Underachieving.
5 middle managers out of 10
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Tuesday, September 19, 2006
A Man, A Hammer And His Super Hot *SPOILER*
Get ready to cut out your tongue in joyous celebration. Director Chan-Wook Park's second cold dish of revenge, Oldboy, is set to receive the 3-disc special edition treatment. Tartan Video has announced details of the new edition, which will drop on November 14th, and it's going to be one that will blow the toothbrush right out of your neck.
Oldboy is the story of a man named Oh Daesu who finds himself imprisoned for 15 years for reasons he does not know. After his equally mysterious release, Oh Daesu, now hardened by years of solitary confinement, sets out to find the people who are responsible for his captivity and exact his revenge. Be thankful you are not a squid.
Those of us who piss and moan every time a beautiful, multi-disc, feature-laden edition of one of our favorite films comes out in Europe or Asia can take heart. This new box (pre-order from Amazon here) will almost match the best Oldboy set to date, the exhaustive, 4-disc limited edition set that was distributed in South Korea in 2004. That set had a very cool handmade copper tin box and included a soundtrack CD, three authentic film cells and an exclusive booklet, among other trinkets. The new one will come in its own fairly attractive tin box with many of the same features. They include:
* An anamorphic widescreen transfer
* Korean Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 Surround tracks
* An English Dolby Digital 5.1 track
* English subtitles
* A commentary track with Director Chan-Wook Park
* Another commentary track with the director and cinematographer
* A third commentary track with the director and cast members
* Five behind the scenes documentaries - "Making the Film – The Cast Remembers," "Production Design," "The Music Score," "CGI Documentary," and "Flashback"
* Forty minutes of cast and crew interviews
* 10 deleted scenes with optional commentary
* A "Le Grand Prix at Cannes" featurette
* A 212-minute video diary entitled "The Autobiography of Oldboy"
* An exclusive film cell from the 35mm reel
* The original 212-page Japanese Manga graphic novel.
For a full-size look at the box art, click the picture or header above. I have not yet seen Park's third revenge tale, Lady Vengeance, which debuts on DVD on September 26th, but I'm already convinced that, taken as a whole (including the first film, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), this trilogy is one of the most engrossing depictions of the highs and lows of the revenge trade that we have yet seen on film. Justice is not an easy thing to attain. Park's films drive that point home with the power of a hundred hammer blows.
Source: DVD Active
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It's Not A Bird Or A Plane You Moron, It's A DVD
He's back, on DVD. And man, is that some poor cover art.
Yes, sometime soon - the release date hasn't been confirmed yet - Superman Returns is hitting DVD, and thanks to DVD Active, we have the specs and the cover art. As usual with most DVDs these days, there'll be two editions; a one-disc bare bones disc, and a two-disc semi-special edition with a three-hour documentary called Requiem for Krypton: Making Superman Returns.
Reception for the film itself was pretty mixed, with many people seeing it up there with Superman: The Movie, whilst many others placing it firmly in the Fortress of Suckitude. As you can read here, I was pretty enthusiastic when I saw it, but after thinking about it was a bit less appreciative. Nevertheless, I'll pick it up, mainly because while some of it was pretty middling, there was still some very good stuff in there. And that airplane scene was pretty cool, yo.
The art above is for the two-disc, the one-disc below. Both are monstrosities, and are far too busy (what's wrong with just the shield?), but the two-disc is the best of a bad bunch.
Source: DVD Active
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News Round-Up: 9/19/06
Read this and you will be spared from what the Rock is freelancing.
I think I might be the only person who hasn't seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and I'm perfectly okay with that. It's not like it's Taxi Driver, at least I think. Anyway, big fat Greek lady Nia Vardalos will be starring in Tom Hanks' production of My Life in Ruins. The big news here though is that Greece will allow them to film some of it on location at the famed Acropolis. No, not the Greek restaurant down the block. Greeks are apparently pretty touchy about their rocks, but Vardalos herself lobbied for the permit and it's surprising that they granted it given their cool reception of her wedding movie and the way "their ethnic cousins in the U.S. were portrayed." I asked the local Greek fast food merchant what he thought but all I could get out of him was "Klau Kalash?"
Source: IMDB
We don't usually cover books here, but reading is a perfectly acceptable form of entertainment, especially when it contains orcs and wizards and Calista Flockhart. And now Tolkienites worldwide will now have another thing to bore people to death with in The Children of Hurin, one of Tolkien's short works which is being edited for release in its own book by his son Christopher Tolkien, notable mainly for not liking Peter Jackson and his band of merry filmmakers for daring to try and adapt his father's precious book. Gandalf Jr says:"It has seemed to me for a long time that there was a good case for presenting my father's long version of the legend of the 'Children of Hurin' as an independent work, between its own covers."
Those that take the time to read it will see that it contains all the usual dwarves, wargs, and beardy men familiar to them from Tolkien's other Middle-Earth works, or so the news stories say. I have a feeling that this will be right up there popularity-wise with The Silmarillion aka the literary equivalent of watching paint dry, and no doubt some weird badge of honor. We were unable to reach Peter Jackson for comment, mostly because we don't have his phone number and he'd probably just say "The Fake What?" but I'm sure fantasy casts and directors are being established by the hardcore geeks as we speak. Even though nobody knows what it's really about. Still, that never stops most nerds. After all, it's not like Halo has much of an actual story and with all the people clamouring for that movie you'd think it was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Source: The Associated Press
According to Christian theology, God and the Devil have been fighting over us since Adam and Eve ate that apple. Well according to a new comedy written by David Hubbard and picked up by New Line Cinema known as God, the Devil, and Lucy, they'll decide everyone's ultimate fate by trying to get a girl to love them. "Without using any of their powers and relying only on human instinct and emotion, whoever gets the woman to say 'I love you' wins all the souls of humanity," says THR. I have to wonder why they didn't come up with this idea years ago. It would make the situation in the middle east a lot better. I'll take a stab at the casting: God must of course be played by John Leguizamo and His Royal Evilness by Armand Assante, and Lucy must be none other than Monica Bellucci. After all, who else is worth betting the world on?Source: The Hollywood Reporter
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The Big Screen: 9/19/06
Once again, we bring you our weekly look at revival screenings around the country. Support the theaters that offer you an alternative!
Los Angeles:
The American Cinematheque and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association join forces to bring you Unknown Cinema: The Animated Films That Got Away, a series of great, obscure, international animation. The series begins Friday with Dangerous Visions, a program of animated shorts ranging from surreal bedtime stories to adaptations of Bukowski, Dafoe and Hindu folklore. On Saturday, Raining Cats and Frogs, the first feature from the director of Triplettes of Belleville, screens alongside The Table Turns, a retrospective look at the career of Paul Grimault, who "has been called "the Walt Disney of France" and is acknowledged as a primary influence by contemporary Japanese maestro Hayao Miyazaki." And on Sunday, the Miyazaki-produced Whisper of the Heart.
Tonight at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica, you could see All The King's Men with Steve Zallian and Mike Medavoy in person, except that it's sold out. Prevent this from happening to you again by becoming a member of The American Cinematheque! In the meantime, you can go see a program of great teen movies, including Rebel Without a Cause, American Graffiti, a double feature of Ferris Bueller's Day Off and The Breakfast Club, and the one I most recommend, The River's Edge, one of the most poignant, disturbing and funny movies about adolescence ever made, sharing a bill with The Chocolate War, which I've never seen. The Cinematheque's animation festival also continues at The Aero, with Whisper of the Heart on Saturday and the very rare feature from Russian stop-motion genius Ladislas Starewich, The Story of the Fox.If The Black Dahlia has left you with a hankerin' for more DePalma, LACMA continues its DePalma series this weekend with screenings of Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out and The Untouchables.
On Saturday night, Cinespia screens my favorite Preston Sturges comedy, The Great McGinty, at The Hollywood Forever Cemetary.
So I hear you saying "I've enjoyed seeing Rocky Horror with a live cast acting out the movie in front of the screen, but I'm ready for something even more annoying." What about having the Rocky Horror cast act out Clue? Yes, that's much more annoying! Friday, midnight, at The Nuart. Saturday's midnight show at The Rialto is Pink Floyd: The Wall. I'll also mention that the rest of the time, the Nuart's screen will have the badass-looking Euro-anime-noir Rennaisance, and the Nu-Wilshire will have Michel Gondry's Science of Sleep.
Down in El Segundo, The Old Town Music Hall has Ma and Pa Kettle at the Fair.
At The New Beverly Cinema tonight, it's a double-dose of erotic eurohorror: Vampyres: Daughters of Dracula and The Blood-Splattered Bride. Friday and Saturday, things get even crazier, with two X-rated, 3-D features (The Disco Dolls in Hot Skin and The Lollipop Girls in Hard Candy!!!). Sunday and Monday, it's True Romance and Pulp Fiction. You'll dig it the most!
New York City:
At Film Forum, an obscure British comedy called Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail is screening throughout the week. Also, if you missed Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows earlier this year, it's screening all week. And Monday has my personal favorite Buster Keaton feature, The Cameraman, on a double bill with Spite Marriage.
At the MoMA, among other things, a series of movies filmed in New York begins this weekend. Hannah and Her Sisters, Do the Right Thing and Taxi Driver are all on the bill.
The Anthology Film Archives present a series of films about Vincent Van Gogh. I didn't realize how many there were: Lust for Life, Vincent & Theo, etc.
Minneapolis/St. Paul:
The Walker Art Center has a number of interesting screening events going on. Tonight, Jacques Telemaque, founder of the Los Angeles Film Alliance and writer/director of The Dog Walker (which will be opening at Landmark's Lagoon Cinema this friday), will be giving a lecture entitled Greenlight Yourself. This sounds like an excellent event for aspiring filmmakers, as Telemaque will be explaining how "by sharing resources and building a collaborative production community, filmmakers can give themselves the green light. Joining a conversation about strategies to increase film production in Minnesota are Robb Mitchell of ScreenLabs, Lucinda Winter from the Minnesota Film and Television Board, and Walker film curator Sheryl Mousley. Short films by FA members will also be shown."
Also at The Walker Center this weekend, the kickoff of Heroic Grace, a program of martial arts films from Hong Kong. Screenings of The New One-Armed Swordsman, Boxer From Shangtung, and Five Muthafuckin' Venoms!!!
Starting tomorrow at Landmark's Uptown Cinema, you can see potential Minnesota senator Al Franken's documentary on himself, Al Franken: God Spoke. Then, for a conservative counterpoint of sorts, head over to Bell Auditorium, "the nation's first dedicated non-fiction screen," and catch Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against The West, which no less a respected scholar than Michael Medved "one of the most powerful, expertly crafted and undeniably important films I've seen this year."
Cleveland:
The Cleveland Institute of Art gets on the Almodovar bandwagon this week with Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, All About My Mother, The Flower of my Secret and Talk to Her. Also worth noting is the documentary After Innocence, examining people who were imprisoned for crimes they did not commit, and later exonerated by DNA evidence, and Bob Fosse's musical Cabaret.
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Behind You!
"...maybe if I tried on your panties, maybe that would work..."
"...so I said 'if you put it in there, it ain't never going no place else', know what I mean?..."
"...you know Episode 2 really isn't that bad..."
ABC is trying to make Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation into a television series.
The film stars Gene Hackman as a surveillance expert who overhears a conversation that may or may not compromise national security, then everything goes all 70's as he becomes ever more paranoid of a conspiracy against him. It's dead good, if you want to catch it, being a low key bit of genius Coppola made in between the operatic spectacles that were the Godfather films.
The television show will be updated to modern times, so Gene Hackman will be younger, not look like a sack of potatoes and be an expert in the very latest electronic surveillance equipment, possibly even the 'net. The shows are being planned as standalone stories, where each week the hero reluctantly helps out people in the sort of trouble that can conveniently be solved by excellent surveillance skills. There will be an overall story arc involving government agencies and that special, secret 'conversation' he overheard.Who knows if this will be any good? It could be a knock off of 24 (one of the producers, Tony Krantz, also works on 24), it could be stupid action fare pretending to be smart (like Tony Scott's Enemy of the State), or it could be a flagrantly partisan piece of myth-mongering, fear-spreading bullshit.
ABC was the network that made The Path to 9/11, you see, which made up scenes and facts in order to show that the World Trade Center attacks were actually Bill Clinton's fault. Clandestine surveillance is a massively relevant topic at the moment, what with illegal phone taps, Patriot Acts, and all that juicy 'War on Terror' stuff. It plays in to politically charged areas very easily, so it will be interesting to see how they portray a hero who is, essentially, a professional snoop. It could be a chance to explore subjects of personal freedom vs. security (and whether there needs to be a 'vs.' between those two words) intelligently and subtly over the long time-period a television series allows. It could be a chance to make another overheated, 'OMG! The Terrorists/Government are trying to kill us all! OH NOES!' piece of reactionary nonsense. It could just be an excuse to play with gadgets and blow things up.
Buggered if I know. While they make this I'll just be off watching Body Double again, which is all about surveillance, voyeurism and that stuff and features lots and lots of naked women.
Source: Variety
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Monday, September 18, 2006
News Round-Up: 9/18/06
Clooney & Cleavage!!!
George Clooney (Good Night, and Good Luck, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind) will be starring and directing in a romantic-comedy about pro football's formation in the 1920s called Leatherheads. Renée Zellweger is also in talks to co-star."[Leatherheads] has had several incarnations over the years. The original premise revolved around an aging football player who coaxes a college star to drop out and try his luck in a new professional league."
It doesn't sound like this one is too certain, though a look into the early days of the pigskin sport could be very interesting. Plus, coming from Clooney, a guy who has yet to make a bad film (granted, he's only made two), Leatherheads should at least be something to keep an eye on.
Source: Variety
Scarlett Johansson may be playing Natascha Kampusch, the Austrian girl who was kidnapped and held in captivity by a man named Wolfgang Priklopil for more than eight years until she finally fled this past August. Scarlett, let me say that if you're reading this and are a Method actress, I'd love to help you find your muse.Since the age of ten, Kampusch lived in a 9 ft. long, 6 ft. wide, 7 ft. 9 in. high underground bunker or "dungeon". I really don't know, but I'm sure their focus will no doubt be on the later years of Kampusch's captivity given Scarlett's... development.
"Several Hollywood studios are keen to secure movie rights to the Austrian's story, which is thought to be worth around £50 million after it hit the headlines around the world. According to the Daily Mail, Johansson, who shares Kampusch's hair and eye colour, is currently producers' favourite to take her role."
Glad to know that they're considering the important things when casting.
Source: Digital Spy
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I Am Not Iron Man
Breaking News! The image you see above is not what Iron Man will look like in his upcoming feature film debut. It could've been, however! A rejected design for ol' Shellhead has just hit the net, giving us a glimpse of the possible direction they might be taking with the character's trademark armor.
Screen Rant got their hands on the designs (Close-ups and more at the link) by visual effects artist Brandon Perlow, and now we can all ooh and ahh over them, and theorize what's so horribly wrong with the look.
"Brandon met with visual effects supervisor John Nelson who said that although he liked the design and that in some cases it paralleled what they were doing, it did not fit in with their overall direction. They're wanting to go in more of an Adi Granov design direction."
That's a positive, in my mind. Granov went for a much more streamlined design with the armor, with a smoother look, and fewer obvious widgets and doodads. The designs Perlow produced are fine, but they're very busy in a few places. There's just too much going on there.
Now, of course, if it were up to me, we all know what we'd get:
Oh yeah. Diving Bell Iron Man or Bust, baby.
Source: Screen Rant
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Pixellated Rebellion - Week Of 9/13/06
Hey, how's it going? That's good. There's a lot of important stuff below you should read. Sony lamentations and Nintendo lactations. And a video! No it's not porn, though I know no one reads this unless I put gratuitous ass and tit shots in the column. I promise next time I'll include some Teen Titans hentai or something.
Hey! Let's read the column!
NOT EVEN RIDGE RACER CAN SAVE THEM NOW
Oh, dear.
I often thought that making fun of Sony was unfair or a bit too presumptuous. After all, the unending sea of fanboyism on all sides of the console wars does that all by themselves with just their existence. I'm also a nice guy if you didn't notice. I give people second chances and shit, and don't kick them when they're down. With that said I'm going to kick Sony when they're down, because speculating about the console wars is very boring without having crude jokes and insane assumptions. For instance, I think that a giant robot Lenin will take over Sony and start a new marketing campaign for the Communist console gamer and bring new found honor and glory to the proud Bolshevist of today.
That's probably a safe assumption.
Perhaps if this long UK delay were the only actual problem it would be easy to forgive Sony and the PS3's Titanic-esque launch (the console is certainly big enough for that comparison, you could fit a galley of slave orphans inside it, in fact that's a feature) but it isn't. Not long after the report about the delay Sony announced the number of units for the PS3 launch in both North America and Japan. I must admit Sony has balls the size of Ego the Living Planet (get the fuck out of there Silver Surfer!) to tell the fanatic Japanese that they will only have 100,000 units on their launch date. And considering Microsoft's armageddon-like launch of 1.5 million Xbox 360s, I do not think 400,000 PS3 units will be enough for North America either.
I'm not sure how Sony screwed up this bad. Everyone at E3 was pretty unanimous that Sony's presentation was a lackluster and embarrassing one, but it was still possible for the hyperbolic entertainment company to come back with a few Tiger uppercuts. Instead it seems the only thing that the PS3 will really be regarded for is Riiiidge Racers and giant enemy crabs.
In all actuality the graphics for the PS3 look very good, and I wouldn't be surprised if it toted the best among the three consoles, but besides that and the XFire multiplayer component Sony doesn't really have any supporters. Even the developers are having a horrendous time with their PS3 dev kits from what I hear, making the very prospect of creating games for the console an unappealing affair. That might hurt the lingering idea that Sony will still have their strong third party support like they did in the past.
So what now for Sony? Expect their lack of units to cause a zombie holocaust. Also, expect the Wii to inflict massive damage.
MY VIDEO GAME EXPERIENCES: COUNTERSTRIKE: SOURCE PART I
The tricky thing about any video game that is meant to be played online is that a lot of people's opinion of it is determined by their experience. With a single player game it's going to be a fairly universal conclusion (save for some instances like Metal Gear Solid. Anyone who likes that game is a Nazi rapist). With MMOs and online shooters it's a lot more of an overall social experience because, like it or not, you'll have to interact with other folks even if it is through the misleading representation of your Night Elf female hunter. I'm sure you won't mind, though, since you're a dirty cyber whore that will do anything for money.
Furthermore, your own personality is going to also make or break your relationship with these virtual social fests. If you're a nun and you go into a Counterstrike: Source server called Hitler's Hacienda of Gay Love, things might not be so great for you.
I myself find a lot of these online gaming social dynamics hilarious and at the same time very scary. In World of Warcraft it is the eerie mixture of reality's own vices and oddities and the appearance of a cartoonish avatar and virtual world (I suppose Second Life would be the leader in this, actually)that makes it so scary. For some reason that twisted dichotomy makes all the cybersex roleplay and passionate Battlegrounds competitiveness all the stranger. Counterstrike: Source is perhaps worse in that most of the problems are derived and created to do nothing else but annoy you. There is no sociological or psychological dynamic behind it. In most cases it's petty arguments or just plain old nuisances. Some of these are funny and other times they're insane.
That's why I made a video all about it.
This is the first part of more I hope to make. I must admit it drained most of the fun out of the game, and I wish I would have held out for an instance that involved a lot more swearing and screaming. I promise next time I'll catch someone flipping out and flailing insults like "fucksauce" or "vaginajuice" for your amusement.
For now you'll just have to deal with the mediocre servings of xXDJHeavenXx.
You can go here for a slightly higher resolution version.
WII ARE READY
$250. November 19th.
$250. November 19th.
Just keep saying that. Keep saying it until it arrives and you cradle it in your arms like a newborn child. Keep saying it until uncreative writers such as myself stop using the name Wii in our article titles as to suggest our cleverness. Keep saying it until you jump through the window of your local Gamestop and body check that weasely kid who runs the register and has the key to the console case. And when you burst triumphantly out of the store, punching the old women who are clawing at your feet for that copy of Zelda: Twilight Princess, I'll be there with my thumb high in the air celebrating your grand prevail.
That is unless you're in my way when I want to buy one. If that's the case you're getting stabbed.
If you hadn't guessed by now, since I'm grossly late with the column, the Nintendo Wii will be released in North America on November 19th for $249.99. Just to cover all bases, it will be released in Europe December 8th for a retail price of £179/249 euros which is about $335.87/$314.57 for us ignorant state siders. And finally the Japanese release will have a price tag of 25,000 yen, which is about $213. The difference between all of these is that the North American and European releases both get Wii Sports for free in the package while Japan's is ultimately cheaper, but lacks the free game title. You can look at the official Wii specs here, which debunks that whole DVD playback rumor that was floating around.
All this information was revealed at Nintendo's little Wii conference in New York where attendees were also able to try out a few of the Wii titles like Red Steel (which apparently still has quite a few sensitivity and calibration problems) and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, which along with Twilight Princess, was a favorite of the event.
The price tag is more than a lot of people expected as it seems to be a widespread epidemic that everyone wanted a $199.99 retail price. I honestly think that's rather silly to assume considering the kind of console and specifications we're getting here. The final price that Nintendo has come up with for North America is fair to say the least, and compared to the other consoles is a godsend. For penniless writers like myself it's a lot kinder than a bare bones Xbox 360 or certainly the NASA space shuttle that is the PS3. Nintendo may not have those cutting edge graphics but they have the gameplay right there for all of us to see.
Speaking of which, it looks like new games will be your customary $49.99 price tag, which I'm fine with as long as the games are worth that much. Microsoft is just starting to edge in games worthy of that expense and I'd hate for Nintendo to turn out $20 quality games for that price. The initial launch titles look interesting but a bit lacking. Zelda, Red Steel, and Tony Hawk: Downhill Jam are the only titles I would consider getting at launch, and the absence of Super Smash Bros. Brawl both angers and scares me. Either way Nintendo expects 30 titles by the end of the year.
If you want to keep your eye on the Wii developments as we get ever closer to launch, I'd suggest checking Gamespot's Wii Launch Center and 1UP's Wii News Center.
$250. November 19th.
Get in my way and you'll bleed.
WORTHWHILE RELEASES OF THE WEEK
Company of Heroes (PC) – September 14, 2006
This is probably the best PC game of the year. Relic has had a beautiful track record with the Homeworld games and the Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of