One of the big thrills of my year thus far was A.) getting to meet and hang out with a bunch of the crew from TGWTG’s side of the interwebs at MAGFest and B.) having everyone turn out to be super, super cool people. This is a weird business, and it’s quietly exhilirating to be able to chill out, “vent” and talk-shop with people who otherwise occupy that nebulous space where you’re simultaneously fans and colleagues of one-another.

I bring this up as a segue into clarifying that, despite “knowing” (and finally not just in the digital sense) a bunch of the principals involved here – no, I had no idea this was coming either…

Anyway, pretty much THE big news in this “industry” a few months back was that Doug Walker (whom I have not had the pleasure of meeting personally as yet) went and gave his Nostalgia Critic series – the nominal “backbone” of TGWTG – a send-off, filing a final episode for the show and sending the character to his final reward as the meta-plot of the site’s annual teamup movie. This was kind of a big deal, since these things rarely “go out” while still exceedingly popular. In it’s place, Walker and his team have been trying out some new material (“Demo Reel,” most notably) which I’ve actually found pretty interesting but was met with… “mixed” reactions from fans, to be charitable.

Well, about an hour ago, THIS went up on their site…

http://blip.tv/play/gbk7g42vDgI.x?p=1http://blip.tv/api.swf#gbk7g42vDgI

I’ll admit it: As a fan of the series, I’m definitely glad to see it coming back in some form… but I’d be A LOT less so if it didn’t feel like Walker was in a good place about it coming back, which is the sense I get from this. This is some of the better acting/staging he’s offered up, period, and what that says to me he’s being sincere about going this route because he wants to – not just because people having been begging him to do it.

I’ve been through the burnout/stagnation rollercoaster in this business myself, to say nothing of the change-averse fandom ride that can come with it. And while I can thank terrific editors for pulling me out of such funks on a few occasions I also understand how rough making these kind of career-direction decisions can be in scenarios where you’re effectively your own boss. It’s hard to make a big change to your own output, but it’s even harder to say that maybe you didn’t change 100% for the better. This is one of the classier versions of the “okay, maybe I spoke too soon…” walkbacks I’ve seen; and I’m now really looking forward to seeing where he goes with this – especially under the more open “directives.”

Hell, I’m so (cautiously, because again I know approximately nothing of the behind-the-scenes business at hand here) happy that I’m not even that put-out about having to scrap “Timothy Green” from the Big Picture to-do list…

For some reason we’re getting two “Die Hard In The White House” movies this year, innevitably to be differentiated as “the one with the black president” and “the one with the white president.” “Olympus Has Fallen,” whose debut trailer showed up today, is the white president installment with Aaron Eckhart as POTUS, Gerard Butler as the lone Secret Service agent left in the danger zone and North(?) Korean Terrorists (seriously?) as the bad guys. Antoine Fuqua directs.

The “black president” version is “White House Down,” which comes later this year courtesy Roland Emmerich with Channing Tatum as the Agent and Jamie Foxx as President Faux-Bama. That one is supposed to be more action/comedy flavored, with Foxx’s character getting in on the heroics.

Not really, but when not watch me spend five minutes elaborating on that?

Exactly 40 years ago on this day, The United States made one of it’s most landmark affirmations of being a nation of laws built not on superstition but rather on reason, reality and science.

At the end of the day, there are two kinds of people: Thinkers and Believers. Today is the anniversary of a day when the Thinkers won out. The fight goes on.

It could be worse.

“Intermission” features things that would probably have been worse, and my fault.

I’d like to spend all day engaging people about this, but the fact is I have a shit-ton of deadline-driven work to do that’s only going to get done if I got media-dark for a few hours. So this will have to be all from me about the big Obama gun laws speech today.

I imagine the number-one thing anyone wants to hear from me is how I feel about the President calling for “more research into violent video-games” as part of his big set of plans/proposals. Honestly? I hated hearing it. It cuts me to the bone when otherwise intelligent, reasonable people I happen to support have to jump and join that particular political dance; especially when I strongly suspect that they’re better than that. I would prefer that the President had said “some have called for more attention paid to a link between violent games or movies and gun deaths, but the fact is that research has already been done a hundred times over and the link quite simply does not exist and continuing to call for it distracts from the real issue; which is guns and the obscene power of the Gun Lobby.”

I’d have liked to see that, and maybe someday I will, but it wasn’t going to be today.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/bcvideo/1.0/iframe/embed.html?videoId=100000002008519&playerType=embed

The fact is, enough of my fellow Americans are paranoid enough (either through their own deficiencies or because they lack the necessary clarity and intellectual confidence to not be swayed by the propaganda of the NRA and their ilk) to give real traction to the meme of Obama/democrats “coming to take all the guns!!!;” one that only gets stronger if said propagandists can claim that they and their issue is being “singled out.” That they and their issue should be singled out is beside the point – “singling out” sounds bad.

Thus was Joe Biden obliged to invite representatives of the movie and game industry (Why not books? Oh, right – older/out-of-touch people aren’t scared/confused by books) to his various summitts – even though he’s smart enough to know that the “link” doesn’t exist – in order to affect the image that guns and gun-rights weren’t “alone” in being called to the principal’s office. And thus is Obama obliged to namecheck some illusory need for violent games “research” even though he’s also smart enough to know better and saavy enough to know that even if he did buy into (for example) the “desensitization” fallacy, actually making any moves that even smelled of censorship would lose he and his party their crucial support among GenX/Y voters.

But here’s the rub: “Calling for more research,” in Washington-speak, translates to “we pretty-much garauntee nothing will come of this.” It is, quite simply, a smoke-screen – a way for the President and his allies to appear to take the “broader solution” nonsense seriously while they get about the real business of breaking the back of the Gun Lobby in order to make U.S. gun laws slightly more sane.

Would I prefer that this hadn’t been part of the speech, even as I recognize it as little more than rhetorical sleight of hand? Of course I would. I also wish he didn’t have slip into maudlin reassurances about “Our Creator” at the end, or that he didn’t need to feign four years worth of “evolution” on his support for gay marriage. I welcome the day, soon to come, when we look back on today’s notions of “violent” movies and games causing real violence with the same “this was actually a THING??” horror and sadness with which we react to Calvin Candie’s phrenology speech in “Django Unchained.”

But that’s not realistically going to happen today, and progressives, young people and especially gamers among them need to recognize that before they think about dismissing and turning their backs on an administration that – where and when it actually counts – has been (and is likely to continue to be) largely on their side. The perfect mustn’t be the enemy of the good.

No, but topical is topical…

Lock n’ load, Internet! Dust off all your best tired-ass “jokes” about speed-ramping, teal n’ orange and “misogyny;” Disney/Lucasfilm have announced that Zack Snyder is doing a “Star Wars” movie.

…but it’s NOT “Episode VII.”

In case you were under the impression that Disney wasn’t planning to milk the ever-loving shit out of the malnourished and neglected cow it recently liberated from Skywalker Ranch; the big announcement here is that they’re going to be making “Star Wars” Universe movies apart from the already-confirmed New Trilogy, and that Snyder will be first out of the gate with an in-canon entry being described as “Kurosawa’s ‘Seven Samurai’ but with Jedi.”

Most important takeaway from this, as far as I’m concerned: Since Snyder’s bankability had been more than a little bruised by the lukewarm reception for “Sucker Punch,” this is a really strong indicator that people within the industry are very, very enthusiastic about how “Man of Steel” is coming together.”

Between Jodie Foster last night at the Globes and Quentin Tarantino a few days ago, 2013 is thus far a good year for movie legends finding highly-entertaining ways of saying “Stop asking about shit everyone already knows the answer to and no I’m not going to play along and give you your precious fucking soundbite/headline/etc anyway.”

…aaaaand now I guess I have to be the asshole critic who can’t resist wondering aloud where this charming, engaging, energetic version of Jodie Foster has BEEN given the forgettable to downright godawful movies she’s been making for well over a decade? I mean, yeah, great moment; but the real “news” here is that she’s come out as someone who hasn’t totally checked-out, after all.

Not especially good.

“Intermission” is the obligatory Oscar column.