Blog Rolls in the Oven… Done By the Weekend (Hopefully)…

Status

I know, I know – I need to finish updating the blogroll over there on the right (yeah, the one that was like three times longer before I accidentally deleted all the links a while back, oops!), as I’ve added a few new folks to my reading list along with some other sites you should check out. I’ll get to that this weekend. I’m still in the process of reformatting over 1000 older posts from the old DAF site to WordPress and that process has been sloooooow thanks to me being that one man band with busted instruments. Anyway, I figured out a devious plan to fix old posts AND get news ones up by linking to them in the future. This will force me to fix those old posts so they don’t link back to the old site anymore and MAYBE, some of those stubborn-heads who’ve subscribed there will slowly but surely get the point and drift on over here at some point. “Yeah, that’s the ticket!” he said, rolling his eyes… Oy yoy yoy, do I need me one of those typing monkeys. Or a Roomba with working fingers to kill a few birds with one stone…

SHARKNADO: Um…OK, I Was Wrong About APE…

Posted on July 10, 2013 by geelw

(muchas gracias, MachinimaETC!)

Well… I should have expected this after Sharktopus, but still… wow. Actually, double wow and a slap to the jaw because I thought of the frogs raining down from P.T. Anderson’s excellent film Magnolia as soon as I saw the “poster” for this soon to be instant classic. Ah, SHARKNADO… you’re a puzzlement! Will I waste two hours with commercials watching this? Mmmmmaybe… not, as anything with Tara Reid in it makes my ears smoke pretty badly. She delivers lines like a drunk mailman delivers a box of champagne flutes. The trailer is more than enough for me to see exactly where this will go and even if it has a surprise ending, I can just ring up a friend I know is going to catch this and ask him what happens. I generally have a super high tolerance for stuff like this, but too much during the week is like stirring heroin into your coffee. Er, not that I’ve ever taken heroin, mind you. I just overheard that analogy made a few years back and have been dying to use it somewhere. Wait, does that me I have to drop dead now? Crap. I still have so much to do! *THUD!*

Random Film of the Week: APE

Posted on July 10, 2013 by geelw

(THANK YOU, Geno the Giant!!!)

OK, I’ve been a bit busy and not keeping up with getting more of these RFotW posts up as I’d like when I’d like to, but here’s a case where having a huge backlog of future posts might be a good thing. I looked at my long (and growing) list of films and instead of randomly selecting one, picked the first one on that list and thankfully, didn’t need to go far to track it down. I wanted a trailer, but the first thing I found was the full movie, always a good thing when it’s legal.

On the other hand… this particular post is about the horrifically terrible and stupid Korean King Kong pastiche that is A*P*E, so you may not agree at all. Then again, it’s hard to hate a film so bad it starts off unintentionally hilarious, gets a tiny bit “serious” turns into a parody of the film and genres it’s trying too hard to copy then goes back to (sort of) being serious at its finale. Yeah, A*P*E swings both ways and then some. Yes, that’s the full film above – pull up a chair or couch and make sure you’re sitting close to the floor, as you may fall off whatever you’re sitting on a few times…

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Shaky Cam Video Alert!: Some More Batmobile Stuff…

Posted on July 10, 2013 by geelw

Oops. Go grab some Dramamine – I’ll wait. OK, you’re back? Good. I’d almost forgotten to upload these awful Batmobile videos from the Mezco Toyz event back on June 25th,so here you go. Thankfully, they’re all short and easily digested (*burp!*). I’m laughing like a maniac in one of those clips because of the absurdity of how small the entrance to the Ripley’s Believe it or Not space is and the fact that so many people were cramming in that it was hard for anyone to get pictures or video.

I think I had another two or three movies I deleted that were nothing but hands with cameras filming more hand with cameras as that Batman theme looped endlessly, but I deleted those because I was laughing even MORE hysterically in those films. I’d have them subtitled in some comic book font if I had decided to run them, though. Some sort of Joker laugh repeating “HA HA HAAAAA!” over and over…

Now Reading: The Greatest BAD Movies of All Time

Posted on July 10, 2013 by geelw

Other than a mistake about what happened to the airliner in the first Airport (see below for a plot spoiler if you’ve not yet seen that 1970 potboiler), Phil Hall’s book is a fun chunk of opinions on one hundred classic and not so classic flicks he’s seen and is worth checking out for his thoughts on 100 movies including some consider better than the “bad” label he slaps them with. Let’s just say if you REALLY liked Mystic River, Hall’s dissection of it will make your eyebrows crisp up but good from the lasers shooting from your eye sockets.

The author carefully notes early on that not everyone will like his picks and that yes, there are a ton of films that I wish would have made the cut in this volume. Amazing junk such as R.O.T.O.R. (in my mind, the “best” worst rip-off of The Terminator ever made) or the epically stupid A*P*E would have been superior to Gamera in terms of classic badness and hell, I’d have dropped the student film version of A Streetcar Named Desire in favor of a Moontrap, The Hidden II or even the Walter Matthau-directed Gangster Story, a film so awful I thought I was dreaming when I finally saw it very early one morning on TCM…

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Rambo: The Videogame Reveal Trailer: Gore Patrol, Reporting For Duty!

Posted on July 10, 2013 by geelw

OK, I wasn’t expecting this game to be anything close to “great”, but I did get a chuckle that Reef Entertainment and developer Teyon have basically taken the extreme violence from 2008’s Rambo and transplanted it into the older films. Of course, if you go back and watch First Blood, you’ll see that John Rambo didn’t actually kill a single person during the film.

The one death he “caused” was actually the fault of the idiot in that helicopter who didn’t think for a second that hanging too far out from that chopper trying to put a bullet into our harried hero was a good idea. Yeah, a lot of people get themselves hurt in that film, but they did pretty much ask for it. Granted, the rest of the series did amp up the body count considerably, so I’ll have to see where this game takes those chapters.

Yeah, I stuck the trailer below the jump, as it’s a bit icky with some gory neck stabbery and an exploding body. Nothing like a little of the old ultra-violence to get your eyeballs wide awake, huh?

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It’s Hump Day and Conan Still Hates Camels.

Posted on July 10, 2013 by geelw

OK, this camel-socking joke has a (VERY) short lifespan, but I’d forgotten about the cinema from Cauldron’s 2004 game Conan (or Conan: The Dark Axe), which never got a US release. It’s not bad for what it is (I own the PC, PAL format Xbox and GameCube versions), clocks in at about 8 or 9 hours the first time through and has versus and survival modes that strangely enough don’t allow you to play as Conan(!). Anyway, yeah… more digital animal abuse (again!) just means I get put on that camel hit list again (which is why I avoid zoos, deserts and anything else where there’s a chance I’ll be set upon by pissed off humpbacked four-legged creatures. Well, I’ve had dreams with camels in them, but I’ve never punched one and they’ve pretty much left me alone…

Bad PR 101: Sega’s “Funny” Folly Went Over (and On) the Heads of Some…

Posted on July 9, 2013 by geelw

Yeah, that postcard to the left was promising back in 1996, but less than three years later, the Sega Saturn ship was about to come crashing to earth in a slow nuclear explosion. While the console did get a number of excellent titles, fans of the system in North America suffered through Sega of America’s leadership at the time that seemed to ignore some pretty obvious Japanese 2D imports in a few genres in favor of approving too many first and third party polygon-based games or imports that seemed “safe” bets if the right segment of the system’s audience was willing to buy them.

Combine that with some third-party games taking seemingly forever to arrive and Sega deciding to only ship limited quantities of the last few major games on the platform and having the gall to rub consumer’s faces in it for the best game on the platform (see below the jump) and you end up with a console that died a horrible death it really didn’t need to…
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Scribblenauts Unmasked Will Keep Your Superman Fix Going Into the Fall…

Posted on July 9, 2013 by geelw

Yeah, Warner Bros. Interactive and 5th Cell have got your Superman right here. Pick one from that list above and you’d best believe he’s going to be in action in the upcoming Scribblenauts Unmasked – A DC Comics Adventure,set to launch itself onto Wii U, Nintendo 3DS and PC in September.

To the press release, Robin! (Hey, Batman is in the game too, so I’m just representin’ here!):

Scribblenauts Unmasked – A DC Comics Adventure is a new game that melds the boundless creativity of the award-winning video game franchise with thousands of DC Comics characters and objects across DC Comics worlds – all drawn in the classic Scribblenauts art style.

The game features a story where players embark as protagonist Maxwell on an imaginative and comical quest, taking them through Gotham City, Metropolis, Atlantis and other iconic locales from the DC Comics universe. Fueled by the player’s imagination, Maxwell must use his magic notebook to put a stop to the villains’ evil schemes and save the day! Scribblenauts Unmasked – A DC Comics Adventure will be available on Sept. 24, 2013 for Wii U, Nintendo 3DS and PC.

BEYOND Two Souls – The Origins: Well-Told Tales Come From Many Sources…

Posted on July 9, 2013 by geelw

Once again, David Cage shows why he’s one of the best and most important game creators working today. Turning a personal tragedy inside out and creating a wholly unique game experience loosely based on it with the dev team at Quantic Dream is going to send PlayStation 3 owners into stores by the millions to buy and play BEYOND: Two Souls when it hits retail and PSN on October 18, 2013. As with Heavy Rain, expect gameplay innovation and impressive visuals (quite possibly the best looking game on the PS3 this late in its life cycle) to go with that story you’ll be playing through.