loonyblog.

I mentioned on Shacknews the other night the Dirty Dozen 2004 list from the Lion & Lamb Project, which among other things points out games that are inappropriate for children. As I said in my LNC, aside from being quoted (which really does creep me out) I have no problem with this organization, but there’s one part of their writeup on Manhunt that I have a problem with:

Even though Manhunt is rated M for Mature by the video game industry, teenagers can easily purchase this game. According to the most recent Federal Trade Commission secret shopper survey, 69 percent of underage teenagers were able to buy M-rated games at retail stores.

Well of course they can…there’s absolutely no law that says they can’t! Not only that, but there’s no industry consensus on the subject either, and in my opinion, that’s the way it should be. If I ran a game retail store, I’d have a giant sign at the front that reads “WE DO NOT CARD FOR M-RATED GAMES.”

Parents need to be educated about the ratings system. Don’t force retailers to do your job for you.

The release of Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat today has inspired some very funny movie reviews. The New York Times (who may never top their Terminator 3 review, which was titled “A Monotonic Cyborg Learns to Say ‘Pantsuit’”) has titled their review “My, a Cat Can Be Mean on a Very Big Screen”. Salon takes this one step further with this tagline:

It’s not worth your money.
Not even one look.
Mike Myers has butchered a great children’s book.

But the best I’ve seen (so far, anyway — the weekend’s just starting!) is by Chris Vognar at The Dallas Morning News, whose entire review is one long Seussical poem. Here’s an excerpt:

There once was a book called The Cat in the Hat.
You’ve probably read it, and loved it at that.
But now it’s a film
And boy, is it rank,
Made just to put cash
In the studio’s bank.

For more, stay tuned to Rotten Tomatoes throughout the weekend.

DVD Times has posted updated features for The Critic: The Complete series:

• 1.33:1 Full Screen
• English DD2.0 Surround
• English subtitles
• Clip Compilations
• Audio Commentary for 8 episodes
• “Creating The Critic” featurette including interviews with James L. Brooks, Al Jean, Mike Reiss, and other co-creators
• “White Rabbits”: Pop-ups during episode 113 which allow you to watch 3 of the scenes in a split-screen fashion showing comparisons of storyboards, rough animations, and the as-aired final animated version of the scene

Hear that? That’s the sound of me pre-ordering. (Or at least, I will when it shows up on Amazon, anyway).

As noted in a news update over at DVDFile, at long last Columbia TriStar has announced The Critic: The Complete Series. The three disc set will come out on January 27th, and contain, as its title would suggest, the entire run of this animated gem.

…and nothing else.

No commentaries, no interviews with the creators, not even the shorts made for Shockwave.com. How disappointing is that? I had hoped to see audio commentaries along the same lines as the wonderful Simpsons and Futurama sets, but I’d be willing to accept the lack of those if there were some kind of meaningful extras. But there’s nothing. And they have the gall to charge $49.95 for this thing?

The box cover says it all. To quote Jay Sherman, “It stinks!”

The cover story on this month’s issue of Wired is about Philip K. Dick, my favorite sci-fi author, who happens to be enjoying a sudden rise in popularity in Hollywood (posthumously, of course). It’s a good article, talking about the Phildick projects that have already been made (like Total Recall and Minority Report) and the upcoming Paycheck, while mentioning a few others that are in the works.

I’ve long thought that certain Phildick books would work really well as movies, but there’s a real problem with doing so. If you’re a reader of Dick’s, you probably have noticed that most of the film projects that are in the works, or have been made from his body of work are adapted from his short stories, rather than his novels. Even Blade Runner was based on a novella (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), rather than one of his full-blown novels. This is, unfortunately, a side effect of Dick’s storytelling. His stories are always wildly original, and his novels even more so. Ultimately, this means it becomes next-to-impossible to give a one-sentence pitch for a Philip K. Dick novel. With Minority Report that was easy. But can you imagine attempting to describe The Man in the High Castle in a 60 second pitch?

That isn’t to say that Phildick novels haven’t been optioned. Apparently both Time Out of Joint and A Scanner Darkly are in the works. Of the two, Time Out of Joint is fairly conventional, and I could see that becoming a solid, screw-with-your-head action flick, but A Scanner Darkly? That’s Dick’s wild novel with a protagonist that’s suffering from multiple personality disorder (but doesn’t realize it). I can’t see how that would translate into a movie, and without that key element it becomes merely a sci-fi anti-drug movie.

His life was interesting enough where I’m sure someone will make a biopic about him someday. If they’re smart, it’ll be totally unconventional, focusing on his far-out religious experience (which was well interpreted by Robert Crumb years ago) and less on the more depressing parts of his life (like his failed marriages and various addictions). Until that happens, chances are every now and then an unusually clever sci-fi movie will come out that’s based on (or at least rips off) something by Philip K. Dick, an author the general population knows nothing about. It’s a sad fate indeed, but at least practically all of Dick’s novels are back in print (including his non-sci-fi works), which means it’s that much easier to discover his work.

Apparently Family Guy might return to Fox with new episodes. That’s kinda cool and all, but what about Futurama? There’s a show that was simply killed off without ever being given a chance. After moving it around like crazy, Fox stuck it in the worst possible time slot for several years on end, and then last year shuttled the show before they even finished airing the already-produced episodes.

There aren’t many shows that were criminally killed off before their time. Most of the time it’s for the best that they end when they do. But Futurama was still in its prime when it ended, and it’s simply a better show than Family Guy. Don’t get me wrong, I like Family Guy as much as the next geek, but given the choice I’ll always opt for Futurama. It’s smarter, funnier, and wildly original.

Boing Boing pointed me towards these awesome maquettes featuring characters from Pink Floyd’s The Wall. There are six in all, and they include the Teacher, Worm (AKA The Judge) and the Marching Hammers. They all look really nice, and capture the feel of Gerald Scarfe’s original drawings exceptionally well, although I’m not sure if I really want a figure based on the male nether regions on my desk. Ditto for the Scorpion figure, which as anyone who has seen the movie will remember, morphs into shape from the equivalent female form. It’s a stunning animated sequence, but on my desk it’s a bit creepy. Plus of course, that $80 price tag is a bit steep. But they do look really cool nonetheless.

Oh great…now I’m going to have “The Trial” stuck in my head all day. That’s just what I need.

Good morning Worm your honor…

Heather’s been out of town for the last couple of days, which among other things, means the cat comes to me at 5:45 in the morning when it’s time for him to be fed. For Heather, this isn’t that big a deal, since she usually gets up at 6:00 AM anyway (she can usually just fend him off for 15 minutes). I, on the other hand, don’t get up until 8:00, which means that when she’s out of town, I get to get up at 5:45, feed the cat and go back to sleep for another two hours.

Or that’s the idea, anyway.

This morning, I did just that. I got up, I fed the cat, I went back to sleep. Not too much later, my alarm went off. I hit the snooze button a couple of times before getting up, jumping in the shower, shaving and running out the door. I had walked about four blocks to the train when I looked at my watch and realized what time it really was.

You see kids, in one of those incredibly stupid things I tend to do every now and then, I must have turned on Heather’s alarm at some point, so when I the alarm went off it wasn’t 8:00 like I thought it was…it was 6:00. And as I walked towards the subway (in the rain, mind you) I had a sinking feeling when I saw the time was actually 7:00 AM, not 9:00 AM like I thought it was.

So I went back home. By this point of course, it was far too late to even attempt to go back to sleep, so I made myself some breakfast and watched an episode of Deep Space Nine, played a bit of Morrowind and then, two hours later, left for work at my usual time.

It could be worse. I’ve done the opposite…I’ve done my whole morning ritual thinking I was on time, only to discover when I reach my office that in fact I’m a full hour late. I blame the fact that I’ve been caffeine-free for over four years now. It makes comprehension of time a bit difficult before noon.

Breakups are never easy, but what happens when a gamer couple breaks up? Sadly, that’s just what’s happening over at game girl advance, where the once-happy couple is in the awkward position of dividing up their Xbox save games, some of which (like KOTOR) can’t be removed from the hard drive. It’s sad. I guess in the future, unmarried couples would be wise to stick with memory cards (or separate consoles).

On my weekly Wednesday trips to the comic book store (Midtown Comics — best in the city) I usually pick up at least two books, more often three or four. But lately I’ve found several of them to be getting increasingly dull, so I’ve decided to ditch a few of them. It wasn’t too long ago that I dropped Green Lantern (got too preachy), Green Arrow (Kevin Smith left and it lost its wit) and Birds of Prey (Chuck Dixon left and the book went straight down the toilet), so this is one of those things I should do every few months or so. Anyway, here’s what I’m ditching today:

• Amazing Spider-Man: I started buying this when J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5) started writing it, and in all that time I can’t say it’s really ever been a particularly good book. Especially for the last few months, the book has felt slight, as if it only took JMS about 20 minutes to write the thing. And John Romita Jr’s artwork has never looked as rushed as it does here. I waited until the latest storyline finished, but now I’m ditching this one for sure.
• JLA: This one I bought for the last bi-weekly storyline, and it’s not bad, but it’s not particularly good either. The book desperately needs to ditch a few characters and do something to get exciting again.
• Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight: Back when there were only four Batman books, this filled my weekly bat-quota. But now that Gotham Central is around (and so much better than this) I’m dropping it completely. The storylines have just been dull, and since they’re all three or more issues long, it can be seriously painful to keep reading it on a regular basis.
• Batman-Superman: What a disappointment this book is. I’ve never liked Ed McGuinness (he draws everyone like they’re super-buff midgets — even his women look like mutants!), but Jeph Loeb is a solid writer, so I had some high hopes for this book. But the first issue was just awful, with narration from each character that sounded like an old married couple talking about each other, and it hasn’t gotten any better since. I won’t miss this one for a minute.
• Batman: The Loeb/Lee storyline was a real dud as far as I’m concerned (now that the whole thing’s out, try and reason the storyline from the solution backwards – it makes no sense), but the single post-Loeb/Lee issue that’s out now is even worse. The 100 Bullets team of Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso should stick to straight noir books. Their Batman reads like a weak chapter of Sin City. It’s only a six-part storyline, so I’ll revisit this one after they’re long gone.

I do of course still buy plenty of books. I buy every Superman monthly, the remaining Batman books, two Vertigo titles (Fables and Y: The Last Man), a few of the America’s Best Comics line (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Tomorrow Stories and Tom Strong), a few others I can’t recall off the top of my head and the occasional limited series (like Neil Gaiman’s 1602) thrown in for good measure. Plus I’m slowly (very, very slowly) making my way through the Transmetropolitan library (I’ve read the first two collections so far), and every now and then there’s an original graphic novel or collection in the mix.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the death of the “pamphlet” style publishing of American comics, but I for one actually like individual issues. Sure, they’re comparatively ugly, and pile up like you wouldn’t believe, but there’s something very nice about going to a store on a weekly basis and spending a few bucks for the latest installments in the books you follow. As long as comics still come out on a regular basis, I’m going to stick by ‘em.