Category: Fanboy

Jedis, Muggles, & Bats.

Coming Soon points the way to a number of 2005 tentpole pics, including this EW shot from Episode III, another from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and a smattering of new images from Batman Begins.

> Enjoy Poetry.


Some big, swollen, vaguely tumescent Hitchhiker’s news today — IGN obtains several pics of the Vogons (designed by the Henson Company — as one AICN wag put, “OMG! Rygel ate Harry!“), including this one at left of unwitting poetry-enthusiasts Arthur (Martin Freeman) and Ford (Mos Def) in the clutches of Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz. (The Intergalactic Highway Bypass Planning Room is also worth a gander.) Very nice.

I’ll be in my trailer (with the geeks).

Hey y’all…sorry for the paucity of updates this week. I’ve been helping some friends of mine finish their film school projects (I’ve put up a few pics from each in my Flickr thread), which has meant getting up at 6am and shooting all day, in addition to my usual academic and freelance obligations well into the wee hours of the night. The upshot is (a) film-acting is much harder than I thought it’d be, since it involves waiting around for long stretches between short bursts of being in character, and (b) I’ve gotten very little sleep over the past week or so, and thus have been too tired at the end of the day to do anything other than plop down in front of the TV and watch some more brilliant episodes of Freaks & Geeks.

Speaking of which…

  • I think I’m developing a moderate crush on Lindsey Weir, particularly in her brief Mathlete incarnation.

  • My sophomore year of high school, I used to play Warhammer (A better-than-average D&D knockoff) on Saturday afternoons with a party that basically broke down half-freak, half-geek (I count myself along the latter — my closest analogue probably would be Sam the baby-faced fanboy, with perhaps some Lindsey and a dollop of Ken.) At any rate, one of these guys (and I really hope he doesn’t read this blog) was the spitting image of Harris (Stephen Lea Sheppard)…the hair, the proto-‘stache, everything. It’s creepy.

  • I know it’s way too late to bring the show back, but could we at least get a Bill Haverchuck spinoff TV movie or something? That guy is funny on a stick.

Pats and Bats.

Well, there may have been no nipple sightings during this year’s somewhat sloppy Superbowl (McCartney, you tease) — nor, as Seth Stevenson points out, were there much in the way of memorable ads — but we did get another look at Batman Begins, which included what appears to be our first glimpse of The Scarecrow, as well as a disaster-movie moment from War of the Worlds. I was hoping for more, but ah well.

The Mongoose to his Spider.

“Absolutely we wanted to have a villain not only who would fulfill the character needs but somebody who could entertain the audience on a visceral level and provide great visuals, something we haven’t seen before, and create a real challenge and great foe for Spider-Man and his unique spidery, spider-like powers.” Sam Raimi announces he’s picked a villain for Spiderman 3, but won’t say who it is. After the Green Goblin/Hobgoblin and Dr. Octopus, Spiderman doesn’t have all that many more culturally resonant arch-nemeses in his Rogue’s Gallery: It’d be hard to see them building a movie around Mysterio, Electro, The Vulture, The Sandman, or Kraven the Hunter. And, while Green Goblin II, The Lizard, and Man-Wolf were all alluded to in Spidey II, only the Harry Osborne/James Franco storyline seems weighty enough to build a third feature around, and I’m not sure they’d want to repeat the Goblin so quickly. So, unless Webhead takes on the entire Sinister Six, I think it’s a pretty good bet we’ll be seeing Venom in the next installment. He got really quickly overused in the McFarlane era, which is right around where I stopped reading Spidey (give or take a few issues of the Straczynski run.) But he should also be an FX dream on film if done right.

Only a Pawn in their Games.

Well, thankfully the expected post-Christmas gaming binge only lasted one month instead of two — I can now look upon the promise of February with nary a high-end gaming product to keep me from my academic business, pleasure reading, blogging, and/or other pursuits. (Well, that is until Day of Defeat Source or, God forbid, Civilization IV rear their heads. I also hear good things about World of Warcraft, but am too fearful of the egregious time-suck that would undoubtedly occur if I started getting into a well-done MMORPG.) A quick roundup:

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: As clever and immersive as GTA III and Vice City, but I thought San Andreas suffered in some ways from slight overkill (particularly in the food/clothing/weight-room character maintenance and the drawn-out travel times between cities.) That being said, having recently replayed the first two forays on XBox, I think my San Andreas experience was hindered by the graphics capability of the PS2, which made the scenery look muddy or devoid of color at certain times of day. (The fact that puppy Berkeley had long ago chewed my PS2 controller joysticks into jagged, thumb-wounding sculpture probably didn’t help either.) San Andreas is undoubtedly amazing, but I’d probably recommend Vice City first to GTA newbies, at least until the XBox port comes out.

Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords: I spent the first week of 2004 doing very little but playing KotOR I, and the first week of 2005 followed the pattern. The game play hadn’t changed much — ok, the game play hadn’t changed at all — but both KotORs traverse the divide between puzzle-based RPG and action-game nicely, so I actually quite enjoyed this second installment. Obviously, I’m also a sucker for the Star Wars bent to these games — At the very least, they’re more fun (and often better-written) than the prequels. Now if only LucasArts would bring back Sam and Max…

Halo 2: As noted everywhere, the multiplayer is really something else — even if I have yet to figure out how not to get endlessly slaughtered by trigger-happy 12-year-olds. Yet, I actually found the single-player campaign both somewhat dull and hard-to-follow. As this Slate article suggested, the Covenant storyline seemed pretty intricate, but damned if I could figure out what was going on half the time. To be honest, I think I prefer my FPS’s on the PC anyway, since, unlike in games like Call of Duty or Day of Defeat, I rarely feel I have any sense of the hitbox on Halo 2…I’m just blasting away and hoping I’m doing damage. Which leads me to…

Halflife 2: Now this is a first-person shooter. HL2 benefited from being the first game I played after procuring a mid-level Radeon graphics card, but still…while I never got around to the recent Doom 3, I can’t remember being this amazed by game graphics in a very long time. (I may have to go back to the original Prince of Persia from 1989.) With HL2, it really seems that game-makers are starting to find their way through the Uncanny Valley. And, while the single-player is on the short side, the 1984 meets Pink Floyd The Wall storyline is great fun, and the physics of the gravity gun really expand the boundaries for environment interaction in these sorts of games. In short, Halflife 2 was worth the wait.