Category: TV and Movies (Page 2 of 5)

My One-Line Transformers Review

July 9, 2007 / Damion Schubert

Once giant robots started kicking the shit out of each other, all was forgiven.

Who Wants to Watch a Movie About Cleaning Toilets?

May 25, 2007 / Damion Schubert

We now interrupt this episode of “The Luddites Strike Back: VoiceChat Sucks!” to point out this story, saying that Fox has bought the movie rights to the Sims. Which implies the unthinkable, which is that someone thought this was a good idea.

For the first time ever, I wish Uwe Boll was the director of an announced film.

So what would YOU put in a Sims movie?

What TV Can Teach About Realism

April 24, 2007 / Damion Schubert

How realistic do you really need your games to be? There is a lesson here from this blog post from famous sitcom writer Ken Levine, who posted about some of the less realistic parts of Cheers. An excerpt: Continue reading

Quick Hits for the Week

January 29, 2007 / Damion Schubert

Item: Vanguard comes out tomorrow.
My Take: I’m gonna play it. Seriously. If anyone else is interested, or any Vanny guilds need someone who doesn’t know what the hell is going on, let me know. Continue reading

My Worthless Opinion on Various Things…

December 11, 2006 / Damion Schubert

Casino Royale: This is both a deeply flawed film with horrible timing, as well as the finest Bond film in years. I think I have a longer essay on me about it, but let’s just say I enjoyed it up to a certain point, and anyone who has seen it probably knows exactly which point I mean.

Sneak King: The Burger King game that involves sneaking up on people to do a little dance and whip out a Whopper for them is utterly hilarious, and totally engaging for about 20 minutes or so. So it was well worth the price tag ($3.99).

Dexter: With all apologies to Heroes, Dexter is the best new show of the fall. Dark, creepy, thought-provoking — good stuff.

Time Spiral: The new Magic expansion is a lot of fun. The new expansion borrows heavily on older mechanics and vibes, and therefore leans heavily on nostalgia. Anyone else whose playing on MTGO, send me mail.

Borat: I laughed all the way through this movie, only feeling marginally guilty about it. Probably the hardest I’ve laughed at a film in a theater in a long time — at least for a film that was intentionally funny.

Prey: I keep trying to get into this game. I keep washing out. I’m sure I’ll get through it at some point.

Original comments thread is here.

Will Wright Goes On Letterman

December 5, 2006 / Damion Schubert

Last night, Will Wright broke ground – being the first video game designer I can remember who was on late night TV. His appearance, including a rather surreal exchange regarding Spore and Intelligent Design, can be found here.

For all the talk about how video games now earn as much money as Hollywood (a largely bogus stat, btw), it’s always been kind of surprising how those who create them haven’t gotten more rock star treatment. Overall, the appearance was relatively slow going, although near the end, I do believe that Will managed to succeed blowing Stephen Colbert’s mind when talking about the more ambitious aspects of Spore. Continue reading

Virtual Reality Reality Shows

November 9, 2006 / Damion Schubert

I’ve posted in the past about Second Life’s amazing ability to draw attention well beyond what their population merits. This trend seems set to continue – Big Brother (the TV show) is set to hold a contest inside of Second Life.

Imagining a reality show set in a Virtual World has interesting ramifications. On one hand, the frozen, static faces of an MMO avatar cannot hope to capture the true magic of reality television: the inadvertent bitchface on a contestant’s face when another contestant has done something truly repugnant.

On the other hand, the level of repugnancy can only be high, when you combine the standard reality TV contestant’s desperate need for attention with the anonymity that the web provides.

The Aristocrats!

August 14, 2006 / Damion Schubert

I saw the Aristocrats last night, and I loved it.

The movie basically is about a joke, told about a hundred times by the world’s greatest comedians. The movie is priceless not only for each iteration of the joke (a vaudeville number that has been around at least a century), but for the comedians ruminating on the joke. The joke itself isn’t very funny- in particular, the punchline sucks. But what it has become is a mental stretching exercise for comedians, to see how far into left field they can go.

Note for the squeamish: by left field, I really mean the dark depths of depravity. This movie is by no means safe for the kiddies or the pure of heart. Still, it gives an interesting behind-the-scenes look at the creative process in another field – stand-up comedy – and for that it’s worth it.

Hyenas on an SUV

July 1, 2006 / Damion Schubert

One of the true pleasures of living in Austin is the Alamo Drafthouse, a movie house in Austin that shows off-beat films, all served with food and drink (I prefer the ‘Godfather’ pizza with a sangria). The reason why Alamo is so successful is that it is run by a man who truly loves and embraces film – not from a pretentious art-film vantagepoint as much as from the view that film is a wonderful social event.

The Alamo runs Mr. Sinus Theater, which is basically Mystery Science Theater 3000 done by live comedians. The primary difference is that, instead of mocking obscure ’50s sci-fi films, they aim both barrels at the movies that our generation is ashamed to admit we loved as kids: movies like Top Gun, Xanadu and Red Dawn. Their send-up of the Karate Kid is one of the most hilarious things I’ve ever seen in my life. Continue reading

More Proof Localization Is Hard

April 4, 2006 / Damion Schubert

I’ve frequently pounded on the desk and said that localization means more than turning ‘Yes, Mister’ into ‘Si, senor’, and being sure your font draws the tilde. Localization means actually understanding how that content must be changed to capture the hearts and minds of different territories.

Why is this hard? Because it’s hard to understand who likes what, and why. For example, CSI: Miami is the #1 American TV show on the worldwide stage . It’s #12 here, and I think most people who watch it do so because, well, it’s so bad it’s snarkworthy. I know that’s why I watch it – usually in the background while going through bloglines. Let’s just say for me, I’m actually a little happy when our cut-rate DVR accidentally deletes an episode. And this is the #1 American show worldwide?

Other monster worldwide hits include Baywatch and Dallas. Which is to say, while the rest of the world hates Ugly Americans, apparently they love to watch them on the telly.