Month: September 2010

Brave and Bold, indeed

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Oh, look, a video-game trailer…

I haven’t been able to gauge what the general “fan-culture” reaction has been to “Batman: The Brave & The Bold” – currently wrapping up it’s final season on Cartoon Network – but I dig it, and apparently it’s big with the kids (as it ought to be.) If you haven’t seen, the basic idea is HUGE helpings of Silver Age DC fan-service disguised as humorous, “all-ages” Batman cartoon. I won’t say it’s up to snuff with “Batman: The Animated Series,” but the best of it ranks up there with the one-off “funny” episodes of “Justice League Unlimited” – think “This Little Piggy,” same basic idea.
In a more general sense, think a more cleverly-scripted cousin to the Adam West “Batman,” co-starring a big cross-section of DCU supporting-players and with a heavier emphasis on “get it past the censors” jokes for parents/older-audiences – for example, pay really close attention to the lyrics in this musical bit as the Birds of Prey rate the… “effectiveness” of their various male counterparts:

Unsurprisingly, you can thank Gail Simone [pause for fangirl squeal] for that one (which may or may not have aired in the U.S. yet)

Anyway, the GAME (Wii) is excellent, absolutely worth a buy (I’m told the DS version is good as well.) It’s a side-scrolling 2D beat-em-up. The controls take a little getting used to, as it’s built around a pretty deep combo-system for a kid-targeted Wii title, but overall pretty smooth once you get into it and looks like it’d be a lot of fun with two people. Developer was Wayforward Technologies, who’ve carved a niche for themselves as experts of retro-style side-scrollers with “Contra 4” and “A Boy & His Blob.” Licensed youth-titles on the Wii are usually a red-flag for shovelware, but retrogamers and/or Silver Age superhero fans should absolutely give it a look.

that’s more like it

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By now we’ve all seen the trailers for “Skyline” – a low(er) budget scifi job due out in November from FX pros The Strause Brothers. Thus far, the “tease” has been that it’s a more narrowly-focused, harder-edged “Independence Day” with funkier-looking alien spaceships that vaccum people up rather than incinerate cities. Solid pitch, to be sure, but it needed a little something else to really “pop” for me.

And so, as if on cue – a bigger, more-revealing “Skyline” trailer with one reveal in particular that sounds an awful lot like “pop.” Take a look:

The Alien Invaders are… GIANT MONSTERS. Or, at least, they brought some with them. But the important thing is… GIANT. FUCKING. MONSTERS.

Sold.

Tragedy

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Sally Menke, whose name you’d BETTER have known as the Academy Award nominated film editor of essentially Quentin Tarantino’s entire filmography (and of the first “Ninja Turtles” movie!), has died at age 56.

The death was apparently the result of a hiking accident. Awful, awful news.

Texting of The Bread

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Below, the trailer for “Texting of The Bread” – a new mobile game that marks ScrewAttack.com’s first foray into game development:

The basic idea is it’s a 2D spin on “Typing of The Dead” (re: “House of The Dead” as a keyboard-training game, cult-classic) with mobile texting and evil Gingerbread Men instead of zombies. I saw it in action back at SGC, and it looked like a lot of fun.

You can pick it up for your iPhone, iPad etc HERE.

Rare specimen of Democrat politician with spine – possibly also testicles – discovered in Florida

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Folks who don’t live in Florida and/or don’t watch a solid amount of Cable News probably haven’t heard of Alan Grayson, the Freshman Democrat Congressman for Florida’s 8th District… but that’s probably going to change once THIS campaign “attack ad” against his Republican challenger Dan Webster hits the Monday news cycle – which was almost-certainly the point.

What makes the ad unique – at least among ads thus-far generally run by “liberals” against “conservatives” – is that it explicitly targets, vilifies and “calls out” the whole concept of “Religious Conservative” political ideology in the harshest possible terms. Summary of the piece: Webster is a hardline anti-abortion/anti women’s-rights Christian Fundamentalist, said views on women and abortion are similarly held by Islamic Fundamentalists, therefore supporting Webster is roughly equivalent to siding with… well, you get the idea – and in case you don’t, it closes out by re-christening Webster “Taliban Dan.”

Video after the jump…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvB-mHXcWzg

Now… there’s a part of me that looks at that and says “Ugh… y’know, regardless of what side it’s on this sort of hyperbole and villianization is exactly what’s wrong with the discourse as a whole.” The OTHER part of me, however – the part that lives in the real world and not Care-A-Lot – says “y’know what? Fuck yeah! Spot-on, about time SOMEONE said it out loud, more of this PLEASE!”

Okay, yeah… the generic “Arabic”-style script on “Taliban Dan” is probably a nudge too far.

But otherwise? Yeah, I’m not ashamed to admit that this particular smackdown makes me more than a little giddy. I’m no more a “liberal” than I am a “conservative” or a “Klingon,” but you don’t need to be a partisan to see what a cancer the “Religious Right” and “Social Conservatives” are on this country – and it’s been too long in coming for rational members of modernity to get up in said ideologies’ faces about how much their “values” have in common with the “values” we’re supposed to be at war with right now.

surprising

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I’ve linked, grudgingly, to “Big Hollywood” – the ‘nominally-conservative-has-been-filmmaker-pity-party’ arm of Andrew Breitbart’s despicable New Media empire – in the past mostly for cautionary purposes, but I’ll give them a modicum of credit for actually putting something up worth reading.

For context, this was supposed to be part of a series on “Hollywood Feminism,” which has mostly been what you’d expect: A succession of would-be Church Ladies whining about too much sex on TV. But to editor John Nolte’s credit, he’s also put up an “alternative” (to put it mildly) take by his friend Lexi Alexander – the German-born female kickboxing champ turned director of “Green Street Hooligans” and the monstrously-underrated “Punisher: WarZone.”

Give it a read HERE – it’s probably the most reasonable thing that particular site has EVER bothered to post.