Oscars and Razzies

It's Big Award Season in Hollywood, and although we're in the time of year where some of the absolute worst movies are being slapped up on theater screens, Tinsel Town is all about self-congratulation and ego-stroking.

Okay, I won't try to be too cynical, but it comes naturally when this topic arises. Now, I'm all for the celebration of movies as art and storytelling, but you cannot look me in the eye and tell me that the Academy Awards was purely about movies -- it's always about the people, the preening actors and directors who couldn't let their work stand on their own recognition, and craved a greater award by their peers.

I'm sure many fine films got the awards they deserved this year, but what always burns me are the many other movies, just as deserving, that didn't get so much as a peep. The Oscars limit themselves with their awkward categories and designations: why can their only be ONE best picture? What makes an actor a "supporting" actor, versus a "main" one or a "cameo"? And is it remotely fair that pretty much any animated movie released in the past year gets nominated for an award due to a lack of entries, whereas dozens of other deserving films go unmentioned? And why are comedies, fantasies and science fiction flicks eschewed as "mere" entertainment?

Happy Feet sucked. Really. Oscar my Italian posterior.

So I pretty much don't watch the Academy Awards any more. I was very much hurt that two of the most incredible films of last year -- The Prestige and Children of Men -- were given the brush off. The Departed won, but of course. It's an ensemble, it's a drama, and Hollywood is giving Scorsese his award out of seniority. BEST picture? No more than Shakespeare In Love, or Kramer vs. Kramer or The English Patient.

I also found myself grumbling a bit when I read The Razzies this year. The Razzies are a sort of anti-Oscar award show, "awarding" the worst of movies in the past year. I'm all for that, but having been a voting member of this group in the past, I know that the award ballot is largely stacked in favor of the award show runners' wishes. They outright ignore films or actors, even hideously attrocious ones, and then try to set up one movie for a landside sweep, by posting it in pretty much every category they list. I think they love it when they can claim a movie won like, 8 or 20 Razzies, versus 2. The ballot also mocks the movies by deliberately misspelling the titles and names, just to draw attention to those entries in hopes you'll vote for them. So, Razzies? Enjoy your piddly attention. You've become just as much of a joke as the movies you lambast.

At least it's all over, and when the dust settles what does an award really do for my -- or your -- enjoyment of a movie? It doesn't magically make a movie better or worse, and we'll go on enjoying what we like, whether it be mainstream or high concept drama or trashy comfort movies, and Hollywood will go hibernate until the Golden Globes rev back up.

Shalen's Review of Webcomics II

I generally find that most of my favorite webcomics are updated slowly, such as www.goblinscomic.com, so I tend to read several at once and am always looking for new ones. First, here is a good source site:

http://www.belfry.com/comics/

A lot of my favorites are on here, and while it might seem like a furry area at first, it also has such staples as Ctrl+Alt+Delete and Sluggy Freelance. Speaking of which:

1. http://www.cad-comic.com/ Ctrl+Alt+Delete

The wacky video-game-mocking adventures of two guys, one tall quiet one and one skinny insane one. Sound familiar? It probably is. Eventually developed an actual plot and characterization, somewhat to the detriment of what originally attracted me to the strip, but video game parodies continue to occur at intervals and are uniformly hilarious.

2. http://www.carpediemcomic.com/ Carpe Diem

Very good art, decent writing, interesting characters, no yiffy grossness (so far). The only thing is that it's about gay furry bodybuilders, so it's sort of a niche market audiencewise. I don't think I'll continue with it, but if you've always wanted to see a shy, overweight cheetah guy hook up with a muscular rhinoceros construction worker, this one is probably for you.

3. http://www.vgcats.com/ VG Cats

Another game-oriented one, but this one doesn't really have a plot/storyline to the characters the way #1 up there does. The only thing that distinguishes it from others of the two-guys-play-videogames type is that the characters are anime-style cat boys. Also, every single joke seems to be about pretty much the same thing. If you think constantly about sex while playing combat games, you might enjoy this.

4. http://yafgc.shipsinker.com/ Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic

No, that's really the title. This D&D monster-oriented strip is often hilarious and frequently darn cute as well. Drawing improves as time goes on. Only shortcoming is that the author is b00b-obsessed, so it's not exactly worksafe. Has some mature content that is non-graphic (other than occasional nudity) and mostly played for laughs. Major plot points include the lesbian man-hating Drow, Arachne, and Mrs. Bloodhand's illegitimate half-orc son.

5. http://www.elgoonishshive.com/ El Goonish Shive

Just ignore the title. The author's name is Dan Shive and he couldn't think of a name. ;) This is sort of an anime/quasi-furry sort of comic, featuring sci fi plots, genetic engineering, anime martial arts and a squirrel girl. I haven't read it in a while because I don't share the author's transformation fetish. Characters keep turning into each other or different forms of themselves. Comics are a very visual medium, and character appearance has a lot to do with character personality. Having character appearance, gender, and sexual orientation constantly in flux interferes with readers' ability to really engage with them. It does mine, at least. Nice drawing, and the writing is more grammatical than some others I've seen.

6. http://www.lfgcomic.com/ Looking For Group

This is a WoW/D&D sort of fantasy comic based, yet again, from the point of view of evil characters - an important difference being that in this one they actually ACT evil. Excellent art, but as usual with the well-drawn and colored comics, updates can be intermittent. Frequently hilarious, especially the warlock/Undead character of Richard. (Yes, Richard.) Not much of an archive yet, but I'm hoping this one continues.

A COUPLE OF BRIEF NOTES ON TRENDS:

This only affects the one I've actually been reading, but I've noticed a couple of things:

1. Fantasy webcomics that are humorous are generally from villain/creature points of view. This was funny and original the first couple of them I read. Gradually I begin to wonder why every single paladin everywhere is actually evil, stupid, or both. I think it might have something to do with the fact that the few non-evil-oriented comics I've glanced at tend to take themselves far too seriously.

2. I've seen quite a few furry comics that appear to be set in essentially the real world. The only difference is that all the characters are animals. Some even omit any real characteristics of said animals other than their appearances (though the degree of HOW animal-like characters are varies widely). Plots then become essentially about relationships, and it feels as if I'm reading a soap opera wherein all the characters have been mysteriously transmuted into foxes and cats. You'd think it would be impossible to make a strip about cat and fox-people dull, but you'd be wrong.

Let's Talk MMOs

As I get older, my available gaming time has decreased somewhat, and my gaming dollars are not as overflowing as they once were. The result? I've become more or less a big fan of MMORPGs -- online role-playing games, which offer a great combination of dollar-to-value ratio over constantly buying new games. The sense of community, the freedom of exploration, and the pseudo-achievement of character development all appeal to the Inner Justin.

So let's talk MMOs for a bit. 2006 was, to say the least, a really sad year for MMO releases. Guild Wars released Factions, which was pretty, but really more of the same excellent PVP, poor solo PVE play. It's nice that it's free, but Guild Wars never held my attention for long.

Dungeons & Dragons Online released in Feb 2006, which was a relief as I was looking to take a break from World of Warcraft anyway. While DDO had great ideas -- the dozens of instanced , narrated dungeons that required group teamwork on the top of the list -- it immediately suffered from a lack of end game play, the sheer repetativeness of the dungeons, the clunky interface and absolutely horrible shopping options. Turbine lately consolodated DDO servers down to a mere handful, which all but spells doom for this game. Pity.

2007

As high quality MMO titles take years and millions of dollars to develop, there's a long anticipatory period where the potential fan community bites their nails searching for any information about the product, worries crop up about whether it will succeed or fail in its promises, and overall anxiety that the project might be axed in the middle of development (which has happened MANY times).

So while MMOs have taken off into the mainstream and grown into a large chunk of computer gamers' living rooms -- mostly thanks to World of Warcraft -- 2006 was mainly a development year in which we had to wait for the next batch of AAA titles coming down the pipeline.

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade - Released in January 2007, TBC broke first-day computer game sales of ALL TIME. It helped matters that the expansion to the 8 million-plus MMO juggernaut received glowing reviews. I've been playing through this, and vastly enjoyed the new content over the old. The art direction is superb, the new races interesting, and the dungeons a blast. Blizzard's announced that they'll be trying to get an expansion pack out for WoW about once a year, so we might even see another expansion by December.

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes - Vanguard's rocky history was no smoother as it released around the same time as TBC. While I followed this "hard core" "old school" MMORPG for a while with interest, somewhere along the line it just lost me. Maybe because it was trying to go back to old game styles that the gaming public really doesn't want any more (harsh death penalties, non-instanced dungeons), maybe the realistic look was honestly too bland. I dunno. Vanguard's gotten some cautiously optimistic reviews, but nothing spectacular -- and the game's incredibly high system requirements are another obstacle to the average gamer in picking it up.

Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Agmar - LOTRO will see release in March, but it needs to build up a lot of steam quickly or else it will be buried by TBC and other fantasy-related titles coming later this year. LOTRO's gotten some good pre-release reviews after its NDA was lifted, but if you ask me, it's more or less doomed to a very low sales count. Why? Well, first of all, Turbine is doing it. Turbine's been in a major slump with DDO and the cancellation of Asheron's Call 2, and they can't quite seem to crawl their way out of it. Second, while the LOTR property is a terrific one, they have no connections to the hit movies, and thus won't be picking up a lot of casual LOTR fans who, say, bought Battle for Middle Earth-type games. Third, it just seems... bland. I mean, I love the idea of Virtues (special skills that you get from accomplishing in game tasks, versus just getting them on levels) and Monster Play (a PVP mode where you get to play a monster against the heroes), but the world is a big "eh" and the lack of glitzy magic (however true to the source material) will hurt them.

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning - Okay, I need to get this out of the way: they really, really should have done Warhammer 40,000 as a MMO instead. We have too many fantasy MMOs as it is, and the Warhammer 40k universe would've been a blast to explore. That said, WAR has gotten some of the best advance press out of the developing MMOs right now. While it looks stylistically similar to WOW (not surprising, since WOW borrowed liberally from WAR's looks), Mythic knows how to do PVP (with Dark Age of Camelot) and they're crafting an entire MMO around this. The classes look fun and very unique, and the quests try to be very different from the solo "collect X things and kill Y critters" of past games.

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures - October 2007 is when this puppy hits, and I will be there at the door. Conan will launch with a lot of wind to its back: it's a recognized and beloved IP, Microsoft is touting it as one of their DX10 launch titles (although it works just fine on DX9), and it will be also released for XBOX 360. I love the look and feel of this low fantasy world, where grit and blood and grime are all a part of the setting. Plus, drunken brawling! This is the MMO I'm most excited about right now.

And that's not even mentioning smaller titles, and possible future titles under development, such as:

- Bioware's so-far unmentioned MMO title
- Fallout Online
- Firefly MMO
- Another Blizzard MMO (World of Starcraft?)
- Star Trek Online
- Interplay's $75 million MMO

Song of Dark Tower watch!

I'm not usually prone to report what's 2% fact and 98% speculation, but this report by IGN is a possible goldmine of a scoop about Stephen King's Dark Tower adaptation. J.J. Abrams' possible involvement is a good sign, as is the desire to do it as a miniseries (a movie would be far, far too short to cover this sprawling 7-book opus).

The Dark Tower is also coming to a comic book rack near you. Soon. Whenever.

Another possible miniseries that I'm eagerly watching is The Song of Ice & Fire, based off of George R. R. Martin's epic low fantasy novels. Definitely pick up and peruse The Game of Thrones if you haven't yet, and be amazed how real a fantasy world can be. Martin weighs in on HBO's optioning the rights to do his books, and while it's exciting to think about it, it's certainly not greenlit at this point to start production.

I've been eager to hear about the pseudo-sequel to Band of Brothers entitled The Pacific War, but nothing new has happened on that front for over a year.

Films I Probably Won't Review

Honestly, we already have several reviews of most of these, but perhaps some of you would also like to buy them and just need that little jog to your memory.

Already bought:

Silent Hill.

I'm not linking to purchase places because I got mine at my local Hollywood Video, which currently has several 4 for $25 sales on previously viewed dvds. Besides, I personally never buy things on Amazon.com. I'm too cheap.

I was a little disappointed in this one in the theater because of the ending, but it was fun to watch again on dvd. I knew what to expect, so I just enjoyed the good parts and swore violently at the lack of a soundtrack available for sale (you can get them for the games, though). I love the industrial clanking and hissing and the sirens. Plot also makes slightly more sense once you've played or (in my case) read up on the games.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse.

Continuing the theme of movies based on games I've never played. I wanted the first one to go with it, but we couldn't find it.

Good ol' brainless elimination/action hybrid, nothing unexpected but still rather fun even for those of us less enamored of naked Milla Jovoviches. Unfairly enough, all the pictures I find are of her and none are of Nemesis, my own favorite character. Boo.

Final Fantasy: Advent Children.

You know, Sephiroth is only in this movie for about ten minutes, and yet he was a major motivating factor in the buying decision. So... Pretty...

Ahem. The animation is quite lovely and the action is fun to watch, even if the characters are somewhat cute and shallow. I'm looking for an inexpensive copy of the game, too.

Watching on ebay:

Versus.

Trenchcoat-clad zombie-fighting action in the Forest of Resurrection! Sure! Why not! The heck with making sense! Honestly, it's ridiculous how much the Sibs and I love this film. It's utterly incoherent and it takes around three viewings to get a clue regarding what's going on.

Favorite line: "Here's the thing. I'm a feminist."

Showdown in Little Tokyo.

It has Brandon Lee AND Dolph Lundgren. That's really all I, personally, need to know. Now, this one will probably get a review from me.

Hamlet.

The Kenneth Branagh version. Never seems to get any cheaper, which is unsurprising considering it's arguably the best cinematic version. Ethan Hawke was just bad at it, and Mel Gibson seems to have largely failed to comprehend the whole "Not an Action Movie" concept. This is not for any but the hardcore Shakespeare fan, as it incorporates the full content of the best quartos and is therefore around four hours long.

Watched on Netflix:

The Omega Man.

I think I liked The Last Man on Earth better. That one starred my hero Vincent Price, whereas this stars Charlton Heston and is nowhere near as interesting or as fresh. Actually they're almost the same movie. The last guy never is really the last guy, he's always the last guy except for the beautiful girl and the nasty mutants and often a few struggling survivors. Not that it really matters much. The human race is still doomed without a healthy breeding population larger than 50. My ecology professor told me so. ;)

Over the Hedge.

Cute, harmless, and largely forgettable. I enjoyed the newspaper strip, but it doesn't lend itself easily to a film-length feature. I think that turtle' s shell must be made of adamantium, by the way. It's obviously indestructible. Also, I will forever picture Avril Lavigne as a possum now.

Doctor Who Wants Your Limbs!

So my wife and I finally got our Netflix-rented copies of the long-awaited Doctor Who: The Second Series the other day and settled in to watch the adventures of the good doctor.

Little did we know... Maybe I'll let the news outlets explain it:

A manufacturing glitch has resulted in an amputation scene from Texas Chainsaw Massacre appearing on Doctor Who DVDs available for rental in America.

According to TV Shows on DVD, subscribers to the Netflix postal DVD rental service were surprised when halfway into "New Earth", episode 1 of the BBC show's second season, images of someone having their limbs removed by chainsaw appeared.

The BBC was praised by the website for swiftly responding to the problem.

"Due to a manufacturing problem, Disc One of the Netflix copies of 'Doctor Who: The Complete Second Series' DVD collection contains incorrect footage from another film. The special features section on Disc One is also inaccessible on rented Netflix copies," the BBC said in a statement. "This error is only found on Disc One of Netflix copies of the series, not on any Doctor Who DVDs available for purchase in stores. We are doing our best to rectify this problem as soon as possible and apologize for any inconvenience or distress."

Munchkin, baby!

So this past weekend I was forcibly removed from my computer and relocated to California and all its 60 degree glory. During this merry jaunt, I went with my wife and brothers in law to a great comic book shop in Sacramento that we usually visit every time I come out.

This time, I decided to take the Great PoolMan's advice and pick up Munchkin, made by Steve Jackson (the GURPS guy) and illustrated by the guy who does Dork Tower.

Munchkin is basically a self-contained card game that you can play with 2-6 people. Regular Munchkin is like a mix of Dungeons & Dragons, UNO and Magic: The Gathering. Each player is an explorer who look in rooms, battle monsters, get loot, and simultaneously help each other and stab each other in the back until one person hits level 10 and wins. It helps that the cards are tremendously amusing, the game is fairly easy to pick up, and it's downright addicting.

I got it on a whim, and by the next day all three of us guys had roped our respective others into playing as well (surprise surprise, the girls loved it too). I'm always a sucker for a good card game (especially since they're portable), and Munchkin has the bonus of adding onto it with three expansion packs (Munchkin 2-4). On top of this, there are different versions of Munchkin, each with a theme -- Space Munchkin (scifi), Super Munchkin (superheroes), and so on. As wacky as it sounds, there's even a way to combine all of the different Munchkin decks into one really weird game: super spies battling elf clerics for control of a laser bazooka.

So, it comes highly recommended from Pooly and from me: Munchkin!

Munchkin at Wikipedia