First bit of news is that Eli Stone, Pushing Daisies, and Dirty Sexy Money have all been canceled. I've never actually watched a full episode of any of these, although Pushing Daisies was from the same guys that created Wonderfalls, which is now one of my favorite shows. I'll have to check out Pushing Daisies three years from now as I'll probably think it's brilliant. Link here.
I picked up a copy of Valve's Left 4 Dead last night, however, the new X-Box Experience kept me interested and loading movies into my Instant Netflix queue to watch this weekend. It's getting pretty good reviews all around (with the occasional "I don't see what the big deal is" review) though, and I must have played the two demo levels 10 times over and still had fun, despite repeatedly hearing "Oh shit!". Games that can provide that kind of longevity are definitely what I'm after, as god knows when I'll be able to buy another game, or if anything good will be coming out for the next five to six months.
Apparently President-Elect Barack Obama's appointed a gamer as co-chair of the FCC transition team, Kevin Werbach (who besides being a gamer is assistant professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at Wharton). His profile on wowarmory.com is viewable here. I doubt that Werbach being a gamer had anything to him being appointed to his position, but I like the idea that someone who obviously enjoys their time spent playing games will be part of the decision making process for games to come.
Spider-man will be receiving a reskin for the pulp-era in the upcoming Marvel release of Spider Man Noir. Despite a few angry fan boys, I am more likely to read this than the current iteration of Spider-Man since it seems a bit more grounded in reality, more than likely due to its new setting, and Spider-Man's bad ass looking costume. A preview can be found here.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Friday, November 7, 2008
Possible future scapegoat, Joss Whedon's new to be cancelled show, and Audrey Kawasaki's curated show...
I have to find a better way to review games, because I would love to unleash how much I loved Fallout 3. Although, until I am in a position I can do it on a consistent basis and with games that I might not necessarily enjoy, I really can't start that process.
The EA Mirror's Edge Demo is currently available for download for its respective consoles and I picked it up last night. The game looked beautiful, and the controls felt surprisingly tight, and the concept of "Runner Vision" worked really well with jumping from BUILDING to BUILDING. Definitely a game I would pay to play, but I can't imagine a game like that lasting longer than eight to ten hours for the single player experience. The demo level presses the player to makes you move fast, so fast that the non-tutorial level of the demo took only about 10-15 minutes to complete. I highly doubt that this will inspire youths to attempt to jump from building to building, but the opportunity to blame the game for something obviously dumb like that will be there. It is apparently also going to ship on time.
I'm disappointed that Joss Whedon's new show will be debuting in February on the Fox Network on Friday. Most if not all shows that play on Friday nights, especially on Fox, usually last a month before they get canned. It has happened to some quality shows (Firefly, Freaky Links), and apparently The Sarah Conner Chronicles will be sharing the night with Whedon's Dollhouse. Yes, X-Files did play on Fridays but that was a rare case with mass appeal. Poor Joss Whedon, him and Judd Apatow should start a club of fantastic shows that get cancelled even though they are usually loved by fans/critics alike. The source is here.
Another fabulous artist that illustrates people in a unique way is Audrey Kawasaki. A strong Japanese influence is present in her work, from her style of painting iconic Japanese birds and the Inari (fox), to including Hiragana/Kanji in her work. She was a featured artist in Juxtapoz a few months back and I fell in love with her work right away. She is apparently currating a show at the Thinkspace Gallery called "Drawing Room". There's a blog that can cover it better than I will but it's definitely worth checking out.
Tune in next time, and thanks for listening chillllllllldren! (fallout3 reference!)
The EA Mirror's Edge Demo is currently available for download for its respective consoles and I picked it up last night. The game looked beautiful, and the controls felt surprisingly tight, and the concept of "Runner Vision" worked really well with jumping from BUILDING to BUILDING. Definitely a game I would pay to play, but I can't imagine a game like that lasting longer than eight to ten hours for the single player experience. The demo level presses the player to makes you move fast, so fast that the non-tutorial level of the demo took only about 10-15 minutes to complete. I highly doubt that this will inspire youths to attempt to jump from building to building, but the opportunity to blame the game for something obviously dumb like that will be there. It is apparently also going to ship on time.
I'm disappointed that Joss Whedon's new show will be debuting in February on the Fox Network on Friday. Most if not all shows that play on Friday nights, especially on Fox, usually last a month before they get canned. It has happened to some quality shows (Firefly, Freaky Links), and apparently The Sarah Conner Chronicles will be sharing the night with Whedon's Dollhouse. Yes, X-Files did play on Fridays but that was a rare case with mass appeal. Poor Joss Whedon, him and Judd Apatow should start a club of fantastic shows that get cancelled even though they are usually loved by fans/critics alike. The source is here.
Another fabulous artist that illustrates people in a unique way is Audrey Kawasaki. A strong Japanese influence is present in her work, from her style of painting iconic Japanese birds and the Inari (fox), to including Hiragana/Kanji in her work. She was a featured artist in Juxtapoz a few months back and I fell in love with her work right away. She is apparently currating a show at the Thinkspace Gallery called "Drawing Room". There's a blog that can cover it better than I will but it's definitely worth checking out.
Tune in next time, and thanks for listening chillllllllldren! (fallout3 reference!)
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Oh that's who does these...
I love tour posters for bands, and am looking forward to stocking my future apartment with copious amounts of artwork from people like Kurt Halsey to Penny Arcade's Gabriel, but I also want to pick up as many tour posters as I can. That brings me to Jason Munn at The Small Stakes. I have seen one of these screen printed beauties up close and they are worth every penny, one of the Stars' "Key" posters. Most of the posters cost around $25, and from someone who works as an Art Consultant, that is not a bad price for a screen printed/giclee limited edition print AT ALL.
Friday, October 31, 2008
This is Halloween, this is Halloween...
Obviously, HAPPY HALLOWEEN! I hope everyone has a safe and super fun Halloween holiday today/tonight! Eat candy until you can't move or can capably run up a wall!
Lots of stuff today, so a quick run through will probably be best. I'll start with this awesome info-graphic for the correlation between hard times and the number of zombie movies produced during that time. As you can see, the Iraq War has led to probably the biggest spike in zombie movies ever!
EA Games cannot escape from the Wall Street bloodbath, regardless that the company is making what seems to me to be an astronomical amount of money, they're laying off roughly 500 poor souls from the top down. When a company has 9,000 people, a drop in share values is bound to put the hurt on everyone. It's tough to believe that company that releases Madden and all the other games has to make a move like this, but then again, they have been buying up every other company under the sun like a corporate blob.
There's an editorial on 1up.com, and I hope it's not the last of its kind. David Braben basically describes how used games are defrauding game developer's large and small of sales (since companies like Gamestop obviously earn the profits from their used game sales). I want to get into this some more because over time I've realized this as well, that Gamestop is a giant corporate entity who DOES NOT NEED YOUR BUSINESS.
There's a new book coming out from Dark Horse called "The Cleaners" and it looks exciting, it reminds me of a manga I read while living in Japan (until they stopped putting furigana on the pages and I couldn't get through a page without resorting to my encyclopedia all the time). The manga which roughly translated to "Corpse Delivery Service" was part CSI, part Raines, and part Dexter and it ruled pretty hard. The Cleaners, however, looks like it will be great, more can be read on the CBR report here.
Watch a scary movie for me.
Lots of stuff today, so a quick run through will probably be best. I'll start with this awesome info-graphic for the correlation between hard times and the number of zombie movies produced during that time. As you can see, the Iraq War has led to probably the biggest spike in zombie movies ever!
EA Games cannot escape from the Wall Street bloodbath, regardless that the company is making what seems to me to be an astronomical amount of money, they're laying off roughly 500 poor souls from the top down. When a company has 9,000 people, a drop in share values is bound to put the hurt on everyone. It's tough to believe that company that releases Madden and all the other games has to make a move like this, but then again, they have been buying up every other company under the sun like a corporate blob.
There's an editorial on 1up.com, and I hope it's not the last of its kind. David Braben basically describes how used games are defrauding game developer's large and small of sales (since companies like Gamestop obviously earn the profits from their used game sales). I want to get into this some more because over time I've realized this as well, that Gamestop is a giant corporate entity who DOES NOT NEED YOUR BUSINESS.
There's a new book coming out from Dark Horse called "The Cleaners" and it looks exciting, it reminds me of a manga I read while living in Japan (until they stopped putting furigana on the pages and I couldn't get through a page without resorting to my encyclopedia all the time). The manga which roughly translated to "Corpse Delivery Service" was part CSI, part Raines, and part Dexter and it ruled pretty hard. The Cleaners, however, looks like it will be great, more can be read on the CBR report here.
Watch a scary movie for me.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Pre-reviews of Fallout 3 are dicey at best, the new Glassjaw album will get groovey, and New York City grafiti artists strike with style!
Two posts within about four days of each other, I know it's crazy. I also will update a review of Fable 2 at some point this week when my mind has had long enough to quantify exactly what the hell I did in that game. Speaking of reviews, Wired's Earnest Cavalli wrote a not so great review of Fallout 3's hands on back in July, although it is hard to figure out exactly how he felt since he is cool enough to not define himself with a number or letter ranking system. It is the first really negative report on the game I've seen.
Instead, Cavalli critiques the game after playing for only thirty minutes, which I don't think is a fair amount of time to try and review anything. Would you watch a half hour of a movie and say that it sucks? How about read a quarter of a book and then rain crap all over it? Probably not, but you're certainly inviting yourself to be in turn critiqued by others if that's the way you work, and I don't feel the "seen enough" statement is ever really a fair way to judge things.
Does that mean Fallout 3, is actually an awful game devoid of anything that made fanboys love the old one? I'm getting my super high-fiving edition Thursday/Friday. Cavalli could afterall be telling the truth, or he could just be on that end of the spectrum, where so many reviewers are scared to speak their mind, he just doesn't care. Which is better than the XOM review I read, giving Fallout 3 a 10/10.
Mr. Brainwash hit up various spots around New York City recently, his style is reminscent of Andy Warhol (which is obvious) but I'm not sure if it's out of respect or the other way around. There's also some Banksy-esque social commentary that is prevalent in Mr. Brainwash's work as well. His website is here, and you are greeted by a kind elderly person on the splash page.
Also Glassjaw is releasing a new record soon! That sounds greeaaaattttt! Worship and Tribute rocked pretty hard, and I'm looking forward to hearing what is being described as a groovey, Massive Attack influenced Glassjaw album as being described by one of Daryl Palumbo's (GJ's singer) close friends.
Instead, Cavalli critiques the game after playing for only thirty minutes, which I don't think is a fair amount of time to try and review anything. Would you watch a half hour of a movie and say that it sucks? How about read a quarter of a book and then rain crap all over it? Probably not, but you're certainly inviting yourself to be in turn critiqued by others if that's the way you work, and I don't feel the "seen enough" statement is ever really a fair way to judge things.
Does that mean Fallout 3, is actually an awful game devoid of anything that made fanboys love the old one? I'm getting my super high-fiving edition Thursday/Friday. Cavalli could afterall be telling the truth, or he could just be on that end of the spectrum, where so many reviewers are scared to speak their mind, he just doesn't care. Which is better than the XOM review I read, giving Fallout 3 a 10/10.
Mr. Brainwash hit up various spots around New York City recently, his style is reminscent of Andy Warhol (which is obvious) but I'm not sure if it's out of respect or the other way around. There's also some Banksy-esque social commentary that is prevalent in Mr. Brainwash's work as well. His website is here, and you are greeted by a kind elderly person on the splash page.
Also Glassjaw is releasing a new record soon! That sounds greeaaaattttt! Worship and Tribute rocked pretty hard, and I'm looking forward to hearing what is being described as a groovey, Massive Attack influenced Glassjaw album as being described by one of Daryl Palumbo's (GJ's singer) close friends.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Almost Halloween and a few more things that prove I don't keep my ear to the ground...
Not to say I'm out of touch, I subscribe to lots of magazines and read lots of blogs (I am being facetious, however). Sometimes though I think it takes a bit for this information to process, percolate in my brain before it clicks. Other times I miss stuff that exists in the first place.
Along the lines with what I was talking about last week with Joe Kelly's upcoming release of "House of They", there is another all ages release coming from Image called "The New Brighton Archeological Society" by Mark Andrew Smith and Matt Weldon. It looks like a fun adventure story, and has a certain charm to it. The samples I've seen don't include any dialogue which to me always seems more ambitious when trying to tell a story. The story focuses on four youths as they try to find/rescue their missing parents. In the process they search for magical artifacts and find their way as young adventurers. It will definitely be worth picking up, part of me was excited by the creators saying they wanted to try and call back on classic comics and artists, such as "Calvin and Hobbes" creator Bill Waterson and Normal Rockwell. Full interview is on CBR.An example of me not knowing something exists, I'd like to demonstrate that by linking the "Inspired by Neil" Flickr group. A collection of artwork and photography inspired by the collective works of Neil Gaiman. There's everything from drawings of The Sandman to imaginative drawings of the button-eyed parents from "Coraline". The Flickr group exists here.
Speaking of Flickr, an artist I saw on Juxtapoz has a wonderful page representing their current exhibition named Booka B. The work reminds me of one of my favorite qualities in art being one person's interpretation in illustrating another person. I enjoy seeing more than a photo realistic version of someone, a slightly skewed version. Seeing art like this definitely makes me wish I kept up with drawing and that perhaps I should get back into it again by taking a drawing class. Regardless, these are some very imaginative portraits, and I do not know whether or not these were drawn free-hand or while observing a photo or whatever, but I love them. If you happen to find yourself in St. Paul, Minnesota at Nicademus Art & Framing, you can view some fantastic art in person.There are also some classy looking shoes/and a parka designed by Aaron Rose, who has helped curate the Beautiful Losers touring art exhibit (which featured Barry McGee!). Although I'm not 100% sure if it's the same Aaron Rose (I'm like 95% sure), his shoes are only being sold in six shops, but are apparently inspired by the Mod aesthetic of the 60's. The shoe is a desert boot look a like, the gum sole has a tear drop pattern and since it's produced by a skateboard/snowboard company, it's probably comfortable as anything could be.
I hope that the programming you happen to catch on every channel is a scary movie, AMC usually starts running non-stop horror movies from now until Halloween. And of course Sci-Fi Channel has had the "31 Days of Halloween" programming, although I'm not too sure if they've been doing anything particularly different than the norm.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Free marketing for everything I talk about...
Four day weeks are great, entirely thanks to Columbus Day. Do I realize that Columbus was an awful bastard that more or less began the eradication of native peoples in the Americas? Of course, how can you not? But am I thankful that for some reason we get a day in Massachusetts because of that raping, pillaging, disease carrying pariah of an explorer? I think most people are, I know I am.
A trailer recently popped up on GameVideos for Bioshock 2. It's definitely not recorded in any kind of fancy FRAPs way, but it gets the job done. There's nothing really all that exciting about the trailer/teaser/whatever, but considering that Bioshock was one of my favorite games in the last couple of years, it'll still be interesting to see how the story continues. The endings you got pretty much wrapped up the story, but I'm thinking that they'll maybe expand on the "evil" ending for this sequel, but it does have the subtitle, "Sea of Dreams", how mysterious. No known release date as of yet.
There's an awesome R2D2 backpack for sale at fredflare.com. It's $65, and anyone who wants to declare how much they have no interest in ever talking with a member of the opposite sex again or just wants to look really cool at the next convention, this is definitely for you. Do I still want one, yeah a small part of me does, so I'm going to strangle that small part with a pillow in its sleep tonight.
One of my new favorite comics series, "Proof" by Alex Grecian (Writer) and Riley Rossmo (Artist) has reached it's first year in publication and doesn't seem to be stopping any time soon. The idea of Cryptids hunting other Cryptids to help protect or defened against them has been popping up a lot lately, such with the Perhapanauts and Sci-Fi's Canadian based Sanctuary television show, but Proof I think is still doing it best so far. The main character, a sophisticated, polite bigfoot who has always been that way and wasn't made sophisticated or polite through any kind of magical laser ray named John "Proof" Prufrock partners up with a former FBI agent named Ginger Brown to protect humanity and some of the strangest endangered creatures around. The full article can be read here.
Until next week, keep it clean, take it deep.
A trailer recently popped up on GameVideos for Bioshock 2. It's definitely not recorded in any kind of fancy FRAPs way, but it gets the job done. There's nothing really all that exciting about the trailer/teaser/whatever, but considering that Bioshock was one of my favorite games in the last couple of years, it'll still be interesting to see how the story continues. The endings you got pretty much wrapped up the story, but I'm thinking that they'll maybe expand on the "evil" ending for this sequel, but it does have the subtitle, "Sea of Dreams", how mysterious. No known release date as of yet.
There's an awesome R2D2 backpack for sale at fredflare.com. It's $65, and anyone who wants to declare how much they have no interest in ever talking with a member of the opposite sex again or just wants to look really cool at the next convention, this is definitely for you. Do I still want one, yeah a small part of me does, so I'm going to strangle that small part with a pillow in its sleep tonight.
One of my new favorite comics series, "Proof" by Alex Grecian (Writer) and Riley Rossmo (Artist) has reached it's first year in publication and doesn't seem to be stopping any time soon. The idea of Cryptids hunting other Cryptids to help protect or defened against them has been popping up a lot lately, such with the Perhapanauts and Sci-Fi's Canadian based Sanctuary television show, but Proof I think is still doing it best so far. The main character, a sophisticated, polite bigfoot who has always been that way and wasn't made sophisticated or polite through any kind of magical laser ray named John "Proof" Prufrock partners up with a former FBI agent named Ginger Brown to protect humanity and some of the strangest endangered creatures around. The full article can be read here.
Until next week, keep it clean, take it deep.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
