David O. Russell has dropped out of his "adaptation" of a series which has brought us the finest single player experience of this generation.
Russell departure comes after "creative differences" with the studio. These "creative differences" may have something to do with the backlash he experienced after basically ignoring the fanbase and the game's premise entirely.
Pretty cool, right? Let's see what David's alternate "interpretation" looks like:
"a crime family that metes out justice in the world of art and antiquities ... They're like the Sopranos in some ways, but they have great taste, and they have a sense of justice." - David O. Russell
Oh, David. Look at you being an ignorant child. Look at you changing an amazing action flick made playable into something your film school buddies can jerk to. Hey, I know, let's just get all the actors back from Huckabees(*) and we can dumb down the source material into First Year Philosophy Class: The Game: The Movie. I know I sure would love to see Jason Schwartzman and Dustin Hoffman talk about nothing for two hours again, this time in an antique store.
But maybe I'm being too hard on David for completely disrespecting a game and a medium more relevant to the new century than his entire body of work. Let's look at the great arTEEST at work on his wank opus.
(*) Well, except for Lily Tomlin. You know, the one you called a cunt in that little tantrum of yours?
One unfamiliar with the series may wonder what the big deal is. The thing about Uncharted is that it is a genuinely well-written piece of blockbuster entertainment in its own right, with characters that stand up to any of cinema's recent batch of action heroes. I would rather guide Nathan Drake through another 12 hour adventure than watch Johnny Depp collect another dump truck full of Disney money. I would certainly rather play Uncharted 2 again than be forced to relive... whatever the hell the last Indiana Jones flick was supposed to be.
The point is that the games industry ought not be star struck by the film industry, especially not by artputzes like David O. Russell. Developer Naughty Dog has created the holy grail - a nonstop playable action franchise with great acting and a script that stands up to any of the genre heavyweights. The desire to cash in on the success of a property is understandable, but game developers need not feel obligated to bend over whenever Hollywood walks in the room. After all, theirs is the most profitable, most intricate creative industry today.
Theirs is the emerging artform of the new century.
As the title may suggest, Saturday, May 7th, is Free Comic Book Day. Now, technically, this is a national holiday, but we're concerned about local free comics and that, of course, means Local Heroes Comics in good old Ghent. The festivities start at 10 AM and there will be free bagels and coffee from Yorgo's Bageldashery, free pizza from Cogan's as well as door prizes and give aways. It's a family affair so check for me and my comic book-obsessed daughter soaking up the free-ness. We like free.
"But, Jerome," you say, "what if I'm not that into comics?"
To that, I say the time is now. I wasn't too keen on comics myself until recently. My six year-old daughter begged me to go into Local Heroes one day after the Cogan's lunch buffet to see if she could find a Scooby Doo comic (she did, in the extensive "appropriate for all-ages" section of the store)and I just started browsing. What I found was that it's not all super powers and mutants. It turns out there are rows upon rows of comics about every subject you can imagine. These works of art range from issues as mundane as hipsters trying to make it in Williamsburg ("The New York Five") to abstract travel through alternate realities of one's own life (the excellent "Infinite Vacation"). I mean, if Superman is your thing they've got that too, but there are more options than crime fighting.
And if comics aren't your thing what do you have to lose? It's all free, right? Please come on out and explore your local comic book store, have something to eat and maybe buy that sweet-ass Local Heroes Led Zep tee before it's retired. Happy Free Comic Book Day.
Tonight (Friday the 6th of May if yr nasty) Portsmouth and Chesapeake have a few of my favorite things going on.
My comedy pal Tim Loulies has an above-board hustle going on over at Comedy Factory: Code Three in Portsmouth. I'm totally going to tell 20 minutes worth of jokes there tonight as the feature. Tim hosts per usual. Looking forward to seeing headliner Alex Scott. 9pm at Code 3 Tavern. Tim has done solids for me and the funny scene and has the best barbecue I've tasted within his family. He's also deeply entertaining. Come see him and you'll find out what I mean.
My other thing that I love that I'm sad to miss is the great Fantasmo. This is where the wonderful Chesapeake Central Library events FantaSci and Monsterfest mated and gave birth to a cult cinema explosion. For one thing, this library is a state of the art facility with ace sound and vision t
hat lets these cats project things on a big screen. For another thing, when public libraries are known for censorship, here we get a librarian and his funky friend pontificating and waxing
fun on (sometimes hard) R-rated features.
Tonight they take on that most fun and daring and uneven genres, the anthology. Shit, I'm going to miss this night, because I've had good anthology nights there. They let me see some great Amicus anthologies on the big screen, and those things paved the way for the great HBO series Tales From The Crypt.
It should be clear here that there is a great fondness here for EC Comics, which wound up giving us MAD Magazine. The best rubric for the series' that recreated their aesthetic is Creepshow, a faux-EC anthology directed by George Romero and written by Stephen King (who also stars in one sequence). Later in the '80s, Romero did his own syndicated anthology, Tales From The Darkside.
Tonight at 8 Fantasmo will be showing Creepshow in all of its featuring-Leslie-Neilson glory. Following at 10:15-ish will be Tales From The Darkside: The Movie. Ha! I didn't even tell you there was an anthology movie there. That's the old Shamylan twist.
Damn near everybody, including myself. Not enough so that I make a habit of keeping them as pets or following photography and digital art involving them. Still, I respect it if that's yr groove. Fat Little Monketeer Becki Lee is one of those people, and I respect that. I also love that she's Odd Future adamant about it. That is the correct way to be about it. Like that crew of ragamuffin hooligans, she expresses herself through Tumblr. Also I've met her pugs, and they're lovable and a joy to pet, play with, and use as a back pillow, as most pugs are. Furthermore, if she finally gets married I'm hoping her and Sean will both take the last name Donnel-Lee.
If you'll scroll down a few posts you'll see that fatlittlemonkey already posted on the difficulty our friend DJ Cornbread had getting permission from the city of Norfolk to DJ in the streets for art everywhere. Despite the fact that no one can find any ordinance that says he can't and despite the "busking" going on around him. DJ Cornbread, of course, explored these loopholes and by-laws until he came to one simple solution. Spin in the streets. Block part syle. So get your cince de Mayo dancing shoes on and head over to Ten Top on Colley at 7:00 to support the dopest DJ in the area while you have a good time to boot. He should be spinning until 8:80-9ish, but if we get there early we'll be able to witness history in the making. Let's do this.
A favorite from my college radio spell. Notwist side project.
2305: Lushlife ft/ Camp Lo, "Another Word For Paradise"
I was still hyped on Camp Lo. Those rappers can rap the fuck out of a rap.
2309: Lupe Fiasco, "Go Go Gadget Flow"
Haven't messed with Lasers yet. Very mixed buzz and Lupe seems to resent it himself. "The Show Goes On" is fun and has that Modest Mouse "Float On" earbug going for it, but I wish an album dropped that followed up the neurotic negativity of The Cool.
2314: Massive Attack, "Five Man Army"
People call me tricky for particular reasons.
2319: Prince, "Pop Life"
The crowd seemed like they would enjoy some Prince, and they seemed to. Maybe I was just itching for some Prince.
So I've been laughing, loving, and drinking liquor. Who wants to fuck and make a revolution?
2329: The Faint, "Worked Up So Sexual"
This track was on the classic Office episode "Night Out" as a coked up Ryan is acting such a fool as to make a group of women beat him up.
2332: The Specials, "Blank Expression"
The Specials are Tricky's all-time favorite band, and he slipped a nod to this song into Massive Attack's "Eurochild".
2335: Kid Cudi, "Pursuit of Happiness"
Ratatat...yay! This has two videos worth watching. Play them both at once and see if you can get them synced up.
2339: Jackie Mittoo, "Right Track"
Crucial Jamaican keyboardist getting his Stevie Wonder on in Canada. (Note to self: Stevie Wonder)
2342: Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, "Spottie"
Ill horn conglomerate instrumentalizes OutKast
2346: James Pants, "We're Through"
Cosmic grandnephew of Gary Wilson, also on Stone's Throw now.
2350: Lady Gaga, "Paparazzi"
Girl comes up to me and requests the new Katy Perry on behalf of her girlfriend. I don't have it on my thumbdrive. I ask her if she likes Gaga. She loves Gaga.
2353: Kool Keith, "Make Up Yr Mind"
I will never stop being thrilled with being allowed to blast porno rap downtown, particularly when it is this good.
2358: Neon Neon, "I Lust U"
Last song, and a good one. Technical difficulties fucked it up. Corrected this disservice tonight.
Raunchy song title circa 1996 or Obama's 2011 christmas card message to every RNC candidate and donor?
I know this isn't exactly a politics blog. I know my stated purpose here is to tell you what's going on with regards to both bleeps and bloops, but please be excusing me if I can't help but get a boner that could cut diamonds after watching the first black president, in a single week, disprove the fairy tale nonsense that lunatics on the right have used to legitimize their bigotry, kill a dictator's kid, and kill the most comically evil super villain of our time.
For most of my formative years and my entire adult life, I have watched some of the most evil piles of garbage this world has ever known usurp power time and time again under the guise of being the only ones who can keep me safe. They have sold the narrative that if they were to lose power, poorly armed footsoldiers from the middle east were going to sail over here in canoes and behead me like some kind of wacky Arab version of Red Dawn.
In a single move, Obama castrated the dick these shitheaps have been riding for the better part of a decade. "It's a race to the bottom re: your wages and living standards, but at least we'll keep you safe" is officially a dog that won't hunt any longer.
Obama showed considerable restraint in delivering his victory speech tonight. If it were me, I'd be blasting Akinyele throughout the District of Columbia tonight. I would have grabbed my dick so hard on the way out of that press conference, and I would have probably yelled, on at least one occasion, "Suck it." In point of fact, the entire speech might very well have been me loading up the lyrics to Fuck Wit Dre Day on the teleprompter, with "John McCain, Sarah Palin, and Sean Hannity" in the place of Easy-E with regards to the devouring of phalluses.
Addendum: There are various flavors of premium fuckin' stupid on the Internet who will point out that this ultimately changes nothing. Yeah, okay, we can't get all that money back we spent destroying two countries. We can't change the fact that we had a borderline autistic chimp in the seat of power for 8 years. We can't change the fact that we'll all be speaking Chinese in 50 years, or that our social programs are being assassinated, or that we killed a fuckton more innocents than Bin Laden did.
None of that shit changes the fact that we popped the motherfucker, and it's awesome. I hate the fact that these wars have defined This American Decade, and I hate the fact that I'm going to die in a cardboard box because we spent my future on bullets and bombs, but fuck your first year lib-arts/sociology student bullshit, for real. OBL needed to get got, and Obama got it done. I haven't really had the chance to say this much since the election, but I'm proud of our president tonight, proud as shit.
I had a chance to talk to DJ Cornbread at "The Torn Flannel Affair" tonight. Seems a comment on the role or lack thereof of the dj in busking led to a sincere visit to the City of Norfolk offices in hopes of spinning outdoors for Art | Everywhere. The issue is currently unresolved as to whether the city will grant permission for a live dj on the streets or if he or she even needs one, but Cornbread will stop back by tomorrow. He hasn't found anything in the letter of city law that would exclude djs from the kind of permissions granted to buskers. Then again, Norfolk's city government has traditionally been unfriendly to anything that smacks of hip hop culture. Click here to refresh yrself on what Norfolk had to say after the 2007 shooting at a Clipse show.
cheers to the newly engaged stephanie goodie and cj weil, who promise to be the most adorable indie newlyweds in at least 4 of the 7 cities. it has a nice ring to it...cj goodie.
Some of you may know Ryan Yates, bka Yatesy, aka Hatesy, aka Mr. Hatesy McWiggles. The rest of you need to. He's easily one of the illest artmakers about, and he will be unspooling his latest opus tonight at the Ten Top starting 6 pm. Me and the fat little conspirators have witnessed him working on this series, and we personally promise it to be the sickest. As the title might hint, this series offers Hatesy's take on personally significant songs and lyrics from the grungy '90s. There will be music and refreshments, but the actual canvasses promise to be the most powerful intoxicants. Do this.
Much of young and restless Norfolk that I've come across this week is all abuzz for Art | Everywhere Opening Night this Saturday, and for good reason. Last year was a striking success, going a long way towards achieving the vision of transforming downtown into an interactive gallery. A feather in the cap for the kids over at AltDaily and everybody who helped them. Including myself. You didn't think I was just going to celebrate local art without talking about myself, did you? This year I've again been assigned to bring the madness and mirth to Hell's Kitchen (actually, they are calling it "Comedy in Hell's Kitchen"). I'll be doing the same thing I did last year but more. More comic friends. More Plan B. More technically organized. Actually that last part was on the word of my contact at Hell's Kitchen, who I learned today is recently not with Hell's Kitchen. Fucking Norfolk bar turnover. In any case I'll be there at 8 making the world laugh. It's gonna be a blast.
Mortal Kombat "The fighting game they give you in heaven as an intermission between the first 36 virgins and the second 36." **** +1/2 out of 5
Before we begin...
"Nothing beat hearing this in the arcade, because you knew someone was about to get their ass kicked." - Random Youtube Comment Guy
There's a part in MORTAL KOMBAT'S story mode, right at the beginning, where Affliction-wearing douchebag moviestar Johnny Cage asks tall, blonde, possibly nordic Sonya Blade out on a date. When she says no, Johnny Cage starts a fight with her, and you have to win the fight, as Cage, to move on in the story mode.
Over the course of the story mode, Sonya Blade then warms up to Johnny Cage to the point where they're probably doing it off-screen when they're not fighting ninjas and monsters and sorcerers.
This is actually one of the less ridiculous things this game does, and if you got some sort of problem with a game universe like this existing, you should really get out now and fuck off back to Farmville.
See, there was a time when video games didn't try to be movies, or the game of chess, and gamers didn't try to be sociologists, and if you dared to suggest that a game had to have 90 minutes worth of cutscenes or that a fighting game had to be sensitive to women or minorities re: character designs, you'd be laughed out of the arcade like the ig'nit putz you are.
MORTAL KOMBAT is a return to that time, a simpler time, a better time. A time when ten different ninjas (who were all the same character model except with a color swap) was all we needed to have a good time. A time when the female ninjas were sexualized - I mean really, really, ridiculously sexualized with their tits hanging out and their mouths covered which is the way GAWD intended - and nobody bitched, or brought up the words "male gaze" (lol) with regards to the fact that each and every female character in the game fought for their lives, fought to da nub in super high heels (it was more like, "holy shit, that bitch totally put that shoe through that other bitch's throat, fucking AWESOME!").
Technically, this is the 9th game in the series proper (we ignore the "Mythologies" offshoot here, despite the fact that Sub-Zero and Shaolin Monks were Most Awesome), but it is not called Mortal Kombat 9. It is simply called MORTAL KOMBAT, ALL KAPS MOTHERFUKA! The website for the game is THEMORTALKOMBAT.COM, and there is a pretty good reason for this aside from standard reboot bullshit: MORTAL KOMBAT is the game the original developers would have made back in the day if they had been permitted by the times. It was never MK that lacked vision, you understand, it was the technology.
A bit of background before the gushing starts is in order: Mortal Kombat (talkin' bout the series as a whole at the moment, so we don't have to use ALL KAPS) started life as Midway's cash in on the Street Fighter II craze. The series endured because it was a fighting game like Street Fighter, except you could rip someone's heart out if you won the match. Each game became progressively more ridiculous, until the developers started throwing in go-kart and bejeweled minigames. That kind of killed the franchise, and so a reboot was necessary.
Here we are.
The absolute best thing that MORTAL KOMBAT brings to the table is the introduction of the X-Ray move. A major stumbling block a lot of people have with fighting games is the memorization and execution of movesets. As a result, you'll run into a lot of situations where people will poo poo the entire genre because they can't get their guy to do any crazy shit. Enter the X-Ray move. If the X-Ray move had been invented 10 or 15 years ago, the fighting game might be as popular in 2011 as the first person shooter. The X-Ray move in MORTAL KOMBAT is like a smartbomb for your enemy's face - press R2 + L2 at once whenever the meter is full, and KABOOOOOOOOOOOM, teeth get knocked out, skulls get clocked and cracked, organs get grabbed and squashed, ribs get broken, eyes get gauged with daggers, shit gets REAL, dig?
You don't have to be an arcade-dwelling weirdo to play and enjoy MORTAL KOMBAT. You can pause at any time and check the moves. They're so awesome, you'll *want* to put in the work to memorize them, except it won't be difficult, because most of the special attacks in MORTAL KOMBAT are as easy as down-back something or down-forward something, with back-back something thrown in every once and a while.
MORTAL KOMBAT plays smoother than something that's really, really smooth. Don't be afraid of it, it's just here to love you, baby.
Following are but a few examples of why MORTAL KOMBAT kicks so much ass. This will get, as Booker might say, "A bit jizzy."
When you play as Quan Chi, the sorcerer, you will find that your powers are largely psychic based. It would not do for a man of Quan Chi's stature to sully himself with the uncouth work of hand-delivering a smackdown, so when Quan Chi goes into X-Ray mode, the other player literally goes into a trance and is made to snap his own neck.
Sindel has this X-Ray move where she kicks the other combatant right in the business with her stiletto boot that must have like a 20 inch heel, it's that ridiculous. Then she snaps your leg in half, because it's like, "you can't have/make babies, you might as well not be able to walk, either." MORTAL KOMBAT understands that overkill is the soundest of all logic.
Stryker has a projectile move where he literally fires his gun as fast as you can keep hitting back-forward-square. If you can manage to do this nonstop for an entire round, by the end, the opponent's face will be entirely soaked with blood. There will be a big red lump where his noggin used to be. Stryker has another move where he throws a grenade at your face and it explodes all KAPOW. Stryker's X-Ray move has him blinding the other Kombatant with a flashlight, cracking their skull with said flashlight after they fall to their knees, breaking their throat with a baton, and tazering them in the neck chub.
Stryker's standard fatality is him pulling out a gun and blowing your fucking head off, and the blow repeats itself one, two, three times (from as many angles) just in case you weren't paying attention.
Remember how Stryker was a pudgy cop with a Gayest Purple Under Armour shirt and a backward baseball cap in (Ultimate) Mortal Kombat 3? In MORTAL KOMBAT, Stryker is a hard, bad motherfucker, and he don't take no mess. Officer Curtis Stryker is pretty much a metaphor for MORTAL KOMBAT as a game. Understand that if you had told me that I would ever compare something to Curtis Stryker as a *compliment,* I would have kicked you in the face and then kicked you again when you stooped down to pick up your teeth.
Is MORTAL KOMBAT "the best fighting game ever?" I don't know. If we make such a claim, there will be some ignorant putz to disagree, probably some guy who fancies himself a scientist for analyzing Japanese sperglords play Street Fighter on Youtube. I don't know if Street Fighter or Virtua Fighter (Gag, Cough, Wheeze) are "deeper" games, but this much is certain: MORTAL KOMBAT is the Most Awesome fighting game of all time.
We're not particularly religious folks on this end, but don't let something as triflin' as your pesky atheism keep you from presently understanding the fact that MORTAL KOMBAT is the fighting game they give you in heaven as an intermission between the first 36 virgins and the second 36. The deeper implication here is that those final 36 wenches must really be something spectacular in the sack, like some kind of crazy supermodel-pornstar-gymnast hybrid demigods with the skill of Aphrodite herself, because otherwise the departed would probably opt out of the last three dozen orgasms and just keep on playing MORTAL KOMBAT until the end of days.
Honestly, if you wanted to play MORTAL KOMBAT until Meggido, you probably could get away with it, because there's a ton of content on this disc. There's a standard arcade mode, and there's online play, but there's also story mode. Story mode in MORTAL KOMBAT is the best thing I have ever seen in a fighting game. Instead of ruining our childhoods with a retcon, MORTAL KOMBAT does that alternate-timeline thing that Star Trek did. Basically, at the end of the last MK game, the canonical ending is the one where Shao Kahn killed everybody and the bad guy won. In MORTAL KOMBAT 2011, Raiden uses the last of his energy to send a message back to his past self in order to try and change the future. Story Mode follows with a combined retelling of the first 3 MK games, except it's all WHIZ BANG POW. There are CG cutscenes in MORTAL KOMBAT, to give story mode context. Story mode in MORTAL KOMBAT feels exactly like an X-Men comic serial, except spines get ripped out and assholes get gored.
MORTAL KOMBAT is a gift to our collective inner 13 year old boy. More than that, MORTAL KOMBAT enables, loves, and nurtures our inner 13 year old boy, in a way that our own mothers never could. MORTAL KOMBAT preserves our inner 13 year old boy, in the way that pectin might keep a fine jam or jelly. I've come to terms with the fact that I was a pretty big loser as a kid, and I didn't shed my virginity until later on in life. Point being, I'm pretty sure that if BULLETSTORM!!!!!!!!!!! and MORTAL KOMBAT 2011 had been released ten years earlier, I wouldn't have seen a girl's bits up close for at least 2 extra years, if ever.
As mentioned, MORTAL KOMBAT has other stuff going on, too. A lot of it. During the game, you earn KOINS. You spend these KOINS at the KRYPT. The Krypt has over 300 items for you to unlock from treasure chests, except the treasure chests are all prisoners and corpses, and when you buy the thing at that particular spot, something nasty happens. So if I pay 1500 Koins to get Scorpion's alternate fatality, it's not like some gay Zelda shit where the green elf man opens the box and a stupid ring tone plays and holds up a potion. It's more like I pay the Koins, and then a man is ripped apart into four quarters, or an iron maiden closes, or a bloated body is picked open by crows, or sludge is force fed into a hanging man's throat until his gut explodes, etc. Then a little message pops up to inform me that I have a new thing to play around with. Did I mention there are over 300 of these?
I would love nothing more than to give MORTAL KOMBAT a perfect score of 5/5. I can't do that, the best I can do is 4.5 out of 5, because MORTAL KOMBAT follows this shit industry trend of forcing those who buy used copies to pay 10 bucks to enable online play. That's why MORTAL KOMBAT gets 4.5, 9/10, etc. Because getting raped is enough to warrant a bit of a dock on the rapist, however otherwise charming he might be.
(Giving MORTAL KOMBAT a 4.5 or comparing MORTAL KOMBAT to an actual rapist who engages in actual rapes are both ridiculous symbolic protests, like suing Microsoft for a buck. In a world where industry executives could take the cashdick out their mouths for half a second, MORTAL KOMBAT would have a 5/5. My pet peeve aside, you should probably buy MORTAL KOMBAT at any price, because I'm really just on some irrelevant bullshit here, and you've paid $60 for games that weren't 25% as good as MORTAL KOMBAT, not even 15%.)
MORTAL KOMBAT is every Saturday morning you ever spent in front of the rotbox wearing your pajamas and eating sugary cereal, and all it will take for you to relive that joy is 60 American Dollars. With Duke and Rage on the way (and Bulletstorm already in the can), MORTAL KOMBAT might not be the MOST AWESOME game of 2011, but it will undoubtedly be in the top 10, maybe even the top 5.
I hate those damn Vans everyone wears. You know the ones. The fucking Authentics. I'm looking at three pairs of them right now and there are only two people in this room. Maybe it's just that I'm centralized in Ghent, but I'm pretty sure every-fucking-body wears these fucking things. And one more fuck for good measure.
Yeah, I get; they're practical and simple in style and function. They actually look kinda fresh with almost anything as long as your nasty hipster ass takes care of them. But, as I may have mentioned before, they are fucking everywhere. Maybe it's like a Truman Show kinda deal and I'm the only one who doesn't know that I'm in a Vans commercial. I mean, I guess they're better than Spicollis - the last thing I wanna see is all your giant, ugly hipster feet in checkers. But still...
One of my editors in this little website (not the smart, funny one. He wears New Balance like a real man) has, like, a pair of these things for every day of the week. Okay, cool... but so does his girl. Maybe my sneaker game is of the old school variety, but where I'm from you don't wear the same kinda shoes as your girl. Why don't you get matching outfits and fake gold chains with your names on them while you're at it, you fucking twinkies? You think because you ride a fixed gear around town and wear jorts you're any different than those assholes walking around Chesapeake Square Mall with their fat girlfriend in their matching Tarheel Jordan re-issues? You're not. You're just another dude wearing the same shoes as everyone else. Step your sneaker game up.
Also, I'd like to link the Vans site here in case they'd like to send me some free kicks.
“Poly Styrene”s voice on “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” was the most exhilarating voice I ever heard.” -Kim Gordon
With all due respect to my pal Joan Jett, Poly Styrene was the first Riot Grrl. Her groundbreaking work with the late-70s punk band X-Ray Spex made it apparent that girls could be as brash as the boys and still have that feminine touch. While less sexual than her American counterpart Debbie Harry, Poly Styrene's day-glo colors, adult braces and unrestrained pogo-ing made her that chick every dude wanted to hang out with like a homeboy. Until about three in the morning when everyone fell asleep but you and her and you could finally make out just the way you'd been imagining since...
Sorry; maybe that was just me.
With lyrics focusing on social mores and the dowfalls of commercialism and normalcy, Poly laid the groundwork for modern day grrls like Kathleen Hanna to look sexy while scaring the shit out of you. In a good way? While X-Ray Spex lasted about as long as the fad they were named for, Poly continued to follow her own path and joined the Hare Krishna movement and explored her spirituality. But she'll probably be best remembered for her immortal opening lines to her most popular song. "Little girls should be seen and not heard," she would snarl, "But I say, 'Oh Bondage! Up Yours!'"
Poly Styrene's death was announced on her website and later confirmed by her manager and publications more reliable than this one. She passed peacefully in her sleep on Monday at the age of 53 and had been treated for breast cancer at a hospice near her home in the south of England.
Tomorrow will be X-Ray Spex day at the fatlittlemonkey offices and we suggest you do the same.
The last two weeks have given us a surprisingly good Office ("Training Day") and a subpar one ("Michael's Last Dundies"). News of Will Ferrell's run as the new manager was off-putting given how much this popular show has resisted using big name guest stars, so the presence of Ferrell promised to be distracting. It was a relief at the beginning of "Training Day" to find Ferrell tapping his good actor and adjusting to The Office, just as Steve Carrell was so good amping up to Ferrell and Adam McKay's world in Anchorman.
The meet-cute between Michael Scott and Ferrell's DeAngelo Vickers strains the limits of human stupidity, but they play it so well together that they can stretch it that far without snapping the tone. They seem totally natural together, cavorting like schoolboys around the office after-hours. It is almost too perfect when Vickers chuckles "We should write a movie or something!" given both that Michael Scott did write a movie and that these are actually two movie stars acting on television.
There is much in these two episodes that is on the nose, but "Training Day" mostly keeps it on the right side of the top. It is oddly consistent and gratifying to hear Scott just announce that he loves fanfare for it's own sake. Given the conceit of meeting the new boss, several characters to some degree just state their role in the show, like this was Community or something. In any case, Mindy Kaling's demonstration of a staged "meet-cute" is further proof that she should have her own movie or sitcom.
The transition from Carrell I still suspect to be unwise but I'm curious to see how they'll handle it. One novel angle here is considering this cast of characters that has, over seven seasons, progressed beyond eccentric from the point of view of a newcomer. One of the most interesting wrinkles is Vickers' perception of who the funny guy is: Andrew Bernard (arousing telling hurt/questioning looks from Scott and Jim Halpert). Scott turns against Vickers on the one-two combo of this choice and the new guy finding a laugh where he couldn't.
Andy stumbles into this role through idiocy mistaken for wit. He soon tries to class up his humor with an actual well-constructed monologue joke that puts off Vickers due to its (non-partisan) political content. Vickers isn't interested in politics, and is repelled by Angela's gloating about her (closeted) state senator boyfriend. He's also repelled by Jim and Pam's gloating about their baby. Though Pam has made a swing back into sympathy in her role as corrupt office manager/corny joke-slinger, it is still gratifying when a character of power silences the couple's smug self-adoration. Vickers' "I know what yr doing, just quit it." stands next to the pre-school interviewer's "Have you ever considered that maybe yr not as charming as you think you are?" in the take-that-Jim-and-Pam canon.
Andy, meanwhile, devolves into buffoonery and then self-lacerating dancing-monkey status to retain his funny-guy status. It is uncannily interesting to see Ferrell playing a character devouring this kind of humor (the kind his detractors accuse him of pandering to). It (like so much this season) risks making the show into too much of a cartoon, but Ed Helms redeems it with his obvious and underplayed pain, resentment, and resignation. The episode has that Office hallmark of layering pain into the silliness.
On the pain front, Dwight is riding for a fall, confronting the knowledge that, after all these years, Michael did not so much as recommend him to succeed him. Yes, Dwight started off as the most obvious cartoon in the cast, and his wackiness has deepened, but so has his humanity and depth. Give or take one attempted coup and one brief resignation, he has been Dunder Mifflin's top salesman, hardest worker, and most loyal employee. It actually is wrong that those around him have never looked past his personal awkwardness and abrasiveness to acknowledge this.
"Training Day" crams at least three great set-pieces into 22 minutes, counting the opening meet-cute. Vickers successfully makes a power move by taking a shave (from Scranton's finest) in his/Scott's office. Scott counters by having Erin attempt to shave him. This potential disaster plays well as the writing straddles just the right side of Erin's mental defectiveness. Like Kevin, Erin can be one of the most charming characters on the show as long as she isn't nudged too far into cartoon retardation. Here, she needs to be quietly stopped from shaving Michael's lips, and that's just enough. She's also adorable locking up in a conflict over Scott's and Vickers' preferred phone greetings.
Michael's spiteful PB&J platter before the slightly peanut-allergic DeAngelo doesn't play as well. Childishly mean-spirited is part of the Michael Scott DNA and can be great in small gestures or directed at Toby. This sequence, however, crosses a line where it isn't the character's best look. Not quite as bad as his racist impression of Darryl last Halloween, but in the same vein. The peanut sequence, however, finds a segue into the third great set-piece. Vickers flees into the "multi-purpose room" (pointedly not the "conference room") and calls a meeting.
Michael unsuccessfully attempts to block everybody from obeying their new boss. As he sees them dutifully file in (and is unsubtly informed that he has lost Dwight's loyalty), he is forced to deal with the losses of his departure. When DeAngelo, in a classy move, comes out to defer to him, they have a reconciliation that is strange, silly, and moving.
blah blah blah:
"Everyone I know who skis is dead"
"The southwest is one of my favorite regions"
"I love the desert...it's one of my favorite ecosystems"
"C'mon, Darryl..."
Kevin's toupee recurs
"What do you think about bald people? I HATE them."
"I saw a hawk. Just looking at me."
Dr. Doolittle masculinity
"What's the Native American girl's name?" (Kelly, who's actually Indian, may have caught the eye of the clueless southwestern enthusiast.)
"Training Day" offered a lot to dig into, but "Michael's Last Dundies" was a disappointing follow-up. Like "Threat Level Midnight", it had problems following up a cherished old episode while dishing out something too cartoonish and off for The Office, then awkwardly trying to shoehorn traumedy into it. The occasion gives several characters occasions for one-off gags, and some of them hit. Many of them are laden with more serious contexts that are ill developed and often not paid off.
This is symptomatic of a problem with the decision to continue beyond Carrell/Scott. The show has lately been giving Michael some good special moments en route to what seems will be a satisfying, happy ending (though I would have been happy with a satisfying, unhappy ending like David Brent had). The problem is these moments have to awkwardly and jarringly compete with efforts to bring the supporting cast more to the fore. It is a great cast, but the writing has sometimes stumbled in doing this, and the limited space can make the Michael stuff seem abrupt and forced.
I'll keep watching until hope is sapped, as The Office still has one of the best casts and writers rooms in the business. While I prefer the American show to the British one, Gervais' creation will prosper historically given the soul of wit (brevity) and it's commitment to a stark, tragic, mundane structure. At seven seasons, the American The Office is long past its seasons 2-4 peak where it demonstrated an ability to stretch those story dynamics further and beyond. Now we're getting into the great unpossible valley.
To speak to this episode, it seemed not so necessary to saddle Ferrell with painful awkwardness. It would be fine if it came from a complex psychomatrix as in the case of the Michael Scott character, but DeAngelo (fingers crossed) won't be around for more than a 4-episode stretch, so what is the reward of putting him through that? Apparently to give him odd set-pieces where he and Michael do bizarre physical schtick and yell at each other. This is what we feared.
There was some serious material (Erin's disillusion with Gabe, Dwight's escalating, um, disillusion, etc.) but it was tossed off and put into the awkward framework of a Dundies that didn't seem nearly as communal and organic as it did many years ago at Chili's. They seemed ill developed and rarely developed for a payoff, more just a parade of grievances and odd shots. The funniest moments went to the writer/background-characters.
Paul Leiberstein got his fine Eyor on as Toby and we got to see BJ Novak's Ryan actually hurt not to be sexually harassed by Michael this year. On the non-writer side, my friend Khori has turned into a Kevin Malone advocate, and I understand that when I see him deliver the title of this post.
There was a video made by Scott that should have been funnier, but trying to cram in that level of awkwardness for Ferrell's brand new character was problematic. It also suffered from the "Threat Level Midnight" problem of being both laughably amateurish and way too sophisticated for Michael Scott to have put together.
It may have been a wash with a few laughs to pan, but the sentimental finale struck a chord in me, as falsely shoehorned in as it was. The whole staff joined Michael in the conference room to deliver a touching parody of a song. As we learned back in "Goodbye, Toby", Michael is a parody song enthusiast and practitioner. It was hard not to sniffle as the whole staff sung him his own goodbye song, a variant of "Seasons of Love" that turns into "Remember to Call". It makes perfect sense that this Office has just caught up to Rent.
Dwight Schrute is notably missing. I'm eagerly awaiting a hate/love final showdown on the scale of Hank on the final episode of The Larry Sanders Show.
Post Rock For Everyone superstars Explosions in the Sky are streaming their new album "Take Care, Take Care, Take Care" on the internet.
They hit the post rock scene with "The Earth is not a Cold Dead Place" in 2003 and the "Friday Night Lights" soundtrack, which is essential down tempo listening.
As if Dr. Dre doesn't have enough money. After winning his lawsuit against Death Row, he is entitled to 100% of the digital royalties from "The Chronic"
According to Billboard.com , "The new incarnation of Death Row Records does not have the rights to sell Dre's iconic rap album "The Chronic" digitally, a federal judge ruled Tuesday."
Looks like Dre can afford that new "Kush" he's smoking.
You may remember when we told you that Camp Lo would be blessing Hangar 09 on April 28...butwaititgetsbetter. Errything is all official and whatnot and by far the best place to buy tickets is http://www.inticketing.com/. Specifically here. That is it. What?
Okay, there's more. The site will be planting a real honest to blog tree for every ticket purchased through it, which will go a long way towards offsetting the countless euphemistic trees that may or may not be blazed in activities related to this show. It's like Arbor Day, but much better since this is a Camp Lo show.
Camp Lo is about to drop a new ablum with Pete Rock kicking his skills on production. The promo mixtape itself is salivation-worthy. Minds are likely to be splattered. Local heroes Ced Hughes and Moe Hendrix will warm it up as they were born to do. In case you didn't know, Moe is the next mayor of Norfolk and Ced is the love child of Barbarella and Lando Caldrissian. Who doesn't want to see these cats mix it up?
As a deadly storm approaches, Norfolk has both severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings. So hopefully things will be super wild at the Belmont tonight. I've blogged here about Substance (Subsdance), and tonight is the birthday party for Papa Subsdance himself, DJ Hazel, Sean Grimes if yr nasty. Khori Johnson will be dropping in on the ones and zeros, and I'm thinking of doing some hype man duty for him. I'm fairly sure Mr. Grimes loves hype. Things get percolating around 10.
On the off chance I survive this, the Belmont is not stopping there. It won't stop there. Sunday night (April 17, 2011) at 9 brings us the first non-secret public performance of Jason Kypros' Plan BWolf Gang Kill Them All movement. Feast yr funny bone on some of the videos they've thrown together and turn up for the show.
Somehow I've ignored Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All.* Only every blog since SXSW has been telling me to check them. But why would I want to do that? Fuck the internet in all its wisdom. It rilly took Khori Johnson to sit me down and introduce me to them.
A lot of nasty words there, particularly for a crew of teenagers and barely twentytons. The video is pretty striking and the mythology hypnotic. I said hypnotic, not coherent. The worm has been in my ear all week now. It's evil is strong. I should mention there are an indeterminate number of them, not just Tyler.
Yeah, I love them. They don't offer the option of neutrality, so I pick the positive option, despite the scatological death that makes up the imagery. I just like watching these kids perform and wish I was young again.
I told Khori I would like to see them live. He affirmed how good they were, but noted that he did not want to get punched in the face. He may be right.
I get it, it's hard out there for a beat scholar in a world where the great pop canon is compressed to 1200 songs and 50 albums for many people. It can be terribly lonely and alienating, which is why at some point I settled for being a beat enthusiast. Regardless of their actual quality, diamond sellers can be infuriating. By their nature they set the limits of awareness for so many. I just can't let this vex me. It was a relief letting go of all my negative connotations of frat boys and suburban culture blanks and learning to enjoy Bob Marley's Legend again. Yes, it barely scratches the surface. Yes, it uses those blanded out bassless rock mixes. Yes, it is still great. If that's all you know of Bob, I feel sorry for you, but I'm afraid you can't have any of the skin off my back.
DJ Cornbread doesn't feel the same way, and he still hates Dark Side of the Moon. Too bad for him, but still hatred is a passion infinitely preferable to indifference. Maybe that's why the new beat mix is so good.
That's Childish Gambino, the nom de rap of my Community obsession Donald Glover. I mean, he's no Alison Brie, but dude is funny as hell and it turns out he can also emcee. I actually felt proud of myself for turning my friend Khori Johnson on to the ChildishDonaldGambi
noGloverCommunityVerse.
Khori is one of the funniest cats I know and, as seen in the silhouette image, a heroic soldier. He also has an ace taste in the musicalism and was one of my greatest supporters in sets at Substance before an unfortunate detour to Iraq. Substance, or as I always like to spell it, Subsdance, is an open decks DJ night at the Belmont on Tuesdays. It is one of the coolest nights of music constantly percolating in Norfolk presided over by some of the nicest people you ever could meet.
The wonderful thing about Subsdance is that it gives you music you don't hear at the bars and clubs every night, but the personal favorites that smart music obsessives are passionate about. It is not streamlined for massive acceptance, but
when you don't like something, a whole new flavor of deep cut is coming up within the half hour. It is a rare oasis of true pop eclecticism in this crazy town.
It is my pleasure to tell you that Khori is back from a war and in town for the next week or so, just in time to do his first Subsdance set. I have no idea what it will comprise, as I could never predict his mp3 shuffle. He does have soft spots for colorful underground hip hop, eccentric mainstream hip hop, French house & its fallout, and winning indiepop, because that is how cool he is. In any case, it is sure to transmit the giddy joy he is known for infecting people with.
Catch him at the Belmont on Tuesday (April 12, 2011 if yr nasty). You won't be sorry for long.
"You can kill us, set us on fire, skin us, beat us and rape us, but you can never stop Duke Nukem Forever. You can drown us in shitty games with emo mutes that trapse around not having sex with anything or even being ballsy enough to saw anything or flood us with generic suit wearing gimps that fight partially inflated trash bags on mars and we will never stop. Duke Nukem Forever is coming. Mortal men may not craft him, gods might not live long enough to play him, the very universe itself may fold under his might, but he will come and there will not be a toilet big enough to park his bricks in.
You can all dance around in your ignorance, your pithy idea that mere financial mechanisms of mere men can stop him. That simply because nobody is there to craft the one true creator, the he cannot rise from his own rest is reason to assume he will never return is pure lunacy. Duke Nukem Forever is Forever. He is before, he is after and he is during, forever. Mock all you want, you could never really grasp the idea of what forever is, let along what duke himself is and you never will."
Duke Nukem Forever is a first person shooter that has been in development since 1997. It is a sequel to the 1996 classic shooter Duke Nukem 3D.
Over twelve years of development have bankrupted its original creators, 3D Realms. Considering that 3D Realms was instrumental in the birthing of another timeless franchise, that's saying something.
Thanks to a firesale of the property to these guys, Duke will finally see the light of day this summer.
In the time since DNF was announced, the PSOne, PS2, PS3, Xbox, Xbox 360, Gamecube, Wii, and at least eight flavors of handheld were announced and released. Sega fell out of the hardware wars and reinvented itself as a terrible publisher of terrible video games (with a fewexceptions). The entire Halo franchise was conceived, released, and handed off to new developers. Grand Theft Auto went from a top-down budget game to what it is today. Mario starred in over 50 games.
To put it in terms nongamers can understand: The entire Harry Potter, Matrix, Twilight, Lord of the Rings, and Pirates of the Caribbean franchises came and went, ran into the ground. 8 seasons of 24. The Sopranos. Sex and the City. Seinfeld off the air.
Even the lowest common denominator should understand the gravity of the fact that when DNF was first announced, the idea of Reality TV hadn't even been tested yet.
When Duke Nukem Forever was first announced, Fox News was less than a year old.
When Duke Nukem Forever was first announced. Justin Bieber was still wetting the bed and more likely than not had a security blanket.
When Duke Nukem Forever was first announced, MTV still played music videos for a good part of the day.
Duke Nukem Forever is forever.
Duke Nukem Forever is the once and future king, it is everything that is right with video games. In a day and age when even the masters of the artform are chasing the quick money to be had by selling glorified poke-poke-swipe flash games to grandmothers and sorority girls at 99 cents a pop, Duke Nukem Forever is coming to bring the medium back to its essence.
This is Duke Nukem Forever:
Duke Nukem Forever will not be a game that your grandmother can play.
It will not be a game that your girlfriend will download on her iPad and tinker with whenever Jersey Shore goes to commercial.
It will not be the game that mainstream news journalists cover for their biannual sweeps week story about how GAME X might be the one to FINALLY MAKE GAMES RESPECATABLE1!!!
Duke Nukem Forever will be a game where an impossibly muscular white male shoots every goddamn thing that moves to save strippers with flawless bodies from an alien invasion.
Duke Nukem Forever doesn't need your respect, thank you.
Duke Nukem Forever will be a game where the tutorial level has you throw poop at the walls just because you can, before heading onto a football field to take down an giant alien overlord with three tits.
After the tutorial, the camera pulls back, and you find out that the entire first level was Duke playing as himself in his video game while two blonde twins in schoolgirl outfits kneel before him.
Through all this, Duke sits upon a literal throne. The girls adjust themselves, implying they've been busy, and one asks him, "...but what about the game, Duke? Was it good?"
Duke says: "After 12 fucking years, it better be."
Duke Nukem Forever is meta as fuck.
Yeah, Duke Nukem Forever is that kind of awesome.
Duke Nukem Forever won't be an open world with six or seven hundred different paths to the same two endings. Duke Nukem Forever won't have a morality system. Duke Nukem Forever won't even have a life bar - when Duke gets shot, his EGO goes down. (Not joking!) The idea that Duke could ever die is laughable: When Duke gets shot enough, he simply throws his hands in the air and says the hell with it.
Duke Nukem Forever is sexist. So what? It is the 80s action movie made playable. It is stupid. It is loud. It is violent. It is crude. It is what it is, and Duke Nukem Forever will be a contender for game of 2011. No matter what may come, Duke Nukem Forever is possibly - nay, probably - the game of the decade, plus two years.
You probably remember this David Bowie gem from a striking sequence in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds.It is one of the filmmaker's fantastic anachronisms that show his strengths as a director-as-dj, scoring a key sequence of an alternate-history movie set in the '40s to a pop song that so thoroughly oozes '80s.* The song is notably not a David Bowie album track (though it was re-recorded and shoehorned into Let's Dance), but the kind of beautiful collaboration that could have only happened in the DeLorean decade.
The music is by living legend, '70s visionary and '80s titan Giorgio Moroder. In the '70s, on his own and with muse Donna Summer, he had a heavier hand than most in imagineering not just disco but modern music as we know it. By the '80s, Moroder was really too much of an artiste to limit himself to pop production, and he was branching out into film scores. At the time, this made the movies he blessed sound invigoratingly modern, then later dated, and now timeless. Even Bowie was lucky to land the promo single/theme to such a movie. The rest of it was pure instrumental Moroder bliss.
1982's Cat People, which spawned the Bowie track, is very much a product of its decade, despite being remade from a 1942 classic.** Ubiquitous horror remakes are currently something of a blight on the ol' pop culture, but there was a golden age from about 1978's Invasion of The Body Snatchers to 1988's The Blob. This period included John Carpenter's 1982 The Thing and David Cronenberg's 1986 The Fly, both all-time greats that improved upon the originals. Cat People isn't that good, but it is an unjustly half-forgotten stylish, sexy '80s ride.
The movie's director, Paul Schrader, isn't always thought of for such films. He's more likely to be thought of as an independent writer/director of good-to-great stone-cold-bummer movies. He's still more likely to be thought of as the intense, Calvinist-raised writer of Martin Scorsese masterpieces. Schrader, however, left a big stamp on the cinematic aesthetic of the '80s, and not just with Cat People.
Even more emblematic of the emergent style was his earlier collaboration with Moroder, American Gigolo. This movie's fingerprints can be found all over Mary Harron's viciously hilarious adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho. Like Cat People, American Gigolo had a splashy promo single/theme, in this case featuring Moroder collaborating with Blondie.
Schrader has outgrown his association with this period. Moroder will always be attached to it, having invented so much of it. Without Moroder, Schrader made another unique, half-forgotten product of the '80s, written and titled after a Bruce Springsteen lyric. Light of Day was an attempt to create a screen vehicle for Joan Jett, who seems like she should be a movie star anyway. Schrader's instinct was to throw her in a working class drama with a popular, talented young comic actor eager to prove his dramatic chops, Michael J. Fox.
*Thoroughly Oozing '80s is, incidentally, the title of a nostalgia movie I'm writing for Lady Gaga, kind of an homage to Desperately Seeking Susan.
**Back to the '40s now. As mega-genius Stephen Hawking famously noted, "Time is all sorts of fucked up."
When writers from "legitimate" (lollin' @ dis!) media break out the fully-loaded Macbook Pros in trendy coffee shops to guest write for videogames, 9 times out of 10, it makes you wonder why they bothered. Example: When it was announced that Alex "28 Days Later" Garland wrote Enslaved, I was overjoyed. That excitement was sorely misplaced, because Alex clearly didn't bring his A-game to the assignment (It should be noted, however, that Enslaved was a good game in many other respects, and it is absolutely a title that you should rent for the weekend).
Thankfully, this isn't the situation with regards to music: Case in point, Mr. Hans Zimmer brings us the Crysis 2 soundtrack. Crysis 2 is an excellent first person shooter - currently the best first person shooter of the year of our lord 2011. It is the touching story of a man and his absolutely ridiculous nanosuit that lets him power jump around Manhattan and cloak invisible and ninja shank mercs AND aliens and cool freaky deeky shit as such.
Lots of people will roll their eyes at you if you suggest that VIDJA GAME MUSAK is worth listening to, but in this case it has the benefit of being absolute fact. (See also: Mass Effect 2, Halos dos and tres, GearsandGod of War and their sequels.
So, even if you have no interest in Crysis 2 (your loss!), do yourself a favor and torrent its score for your iPod. Or buy it. Whichevz, we ain't here to judge.
(Protip: pretend it's a leaked OST to the next non-Bats Nolan picture so you can keep your jaded-as-f*ck street cred intact.)
