Well, it took a decade, but I've finally found a horror movie with a worse climatic breakdown than American Werewolf in London!
Okay, let's back up. As I've noted waaaaaay before, I have a love for movies about the evil children, so I've been looking forward to Grace for some time. The trailer was creepy as shit, there was tons of buzz at the festivals, and look at that fucking poster! I had waited to watch this movie with my mom, as she's a OB/RN and breastfeeding consultant, so I also got the inside scoop on what this movie got right. (fun fact: despite what is said near the end of the film, olden time breastpumps made out of brass and glass do not work as well as a modern Medela electric!)
(minor spoilers ahead in this paragraph) Grace involves a pregnant, vegan lady who decides to get a delivery via weird New Age midwife (who is, unusually, also a doctor from Columbia). Unfortunately, things rapidly go wrong, as she and her husband are in an accident that kills the latter. It seems clear that the baby is also dead, but the wife decides to continue waiting a few weeks for a delivery to occur, and glory be, the babby is alive. Except not really. Oh yeah, and it also doesn't really like milk. Can you, intelligent reader, determine what is going to happen? Hint: there's also a subplot about the dead husband's mother and her doctor meddling around.
There's alot that works really well. Jordan Ladd nails the weird mix of grief, postpartum depression, and blinding exhilaration over the miracle birth. Most of the artsy shots aren't too awful, especially the gradual degeneration of the marital home and flypaper surrounding the crib, though by the third shot of the mother doing something while the television played some slaughterhouse documentary, I felt a little ridiculous. Up until the final sequence of events, the movie manages to juggle the various subplots, all basically dealing with how crazy bitches are, fairly well. I was also pleased that (minor spoilers I guess) the aforementioned "Grace" isn't some evil demon baby, but instead the movie draws its horror from the extremes of the parent/child relationship.
And there's the effects. One gets the impression that the director saw Dead Ringers about a gazillion times, as while the gore is gross, it's gross neither in the lurid cartoony 80's slasher way nor the emotionally manipulative torture horror way, but in the "oh god this is boring right into the lizard center of my brain" way. All is very unsettling and uncanny as the best domestic horror pictures seem to do, and right to the end I was pretty much pumping my fist at the movie as it slowly rounded the track, never letting up until holy shit what the fuck happened.
Grace was originally a short film, and it really explains the utter abortion (hurr) of the ending. Everything about the movie, in retrospect, shows a great idea that could only be sustained until it came time to close the whole thing up. Then, the movie suddenly warps from a creepy study of motherly instincts to a tone of wackiness more at home in a classic Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequel. I get the unfortunate feeling that the filmmaker recognized the dissonance of tone, and inserted in there as some easy attempt to broadcast a message about something, but FUCK THAT.
Indie films love to portray poor white people. They allow us, the privileged audience, to get equal parts pity and superiority at those people who would smoke meth and still make jokes about the Wii into 2011. Generally, the strokes are broad and stereotypcal, a pastiche of the butt-raping mutants from Deliverance with maybe some idiot god character like the guy from Sling Blade. It's easy to write, and you don't have to worry about offending actual hicks, since even they can laugh at the gross parody of their lives, and even if there's some uncomfortable truth, they're used to/levelheaded enough not to worry about how a movie that no one important is going to watch represents them.
Gasland, a documentary about the effects of natural gas mining in rural America, and Winter's Bone, a sort of film noir set in the backwoods Ozarks, present two diversions from the usual portrayal. Gasland does its damnedest to show its subjects as JUST ORDINARY PEOPLE and fails pretty miserably, but Winter's Bone, in being willing to show the actual ugliness of those people were know crouch in rural lands, but don't like to think about, humanizes them incredibly well.
To be fair, I think people should watch Gasland. I have trouble believing the full extent of the film's thesis that natural gas drilling is probably about to kill America, but the truth is probably far closer to that end of the spectrum than the gas company's bordering on parody advertisements implying that natural gas is SO FUCKING GOOD LOOK AT THE JOBS AND HELPING ENVIRONMENT. Having the family home on the Fayetteville Shale means we've been assaulted by print and television ads by Chesapeake Energy for years, and it's pretty depressing how most neighbors literally had no trouble believing that gas drilling would have no ramifications. I'd be lying if I wasn't amused by the fact that the same racist WHITE MAN IS THE SMARTEST GENETIC KING subsection of people are basically modern Indians staring gap-mouthed at shiny baubles courtesy of our energy kings.
While I enjoyed the message of Gasland, especially since it's so far the only film actually looking at what's a fairly important environmental problem (while at the same time we're probably at our twentieth documentary about Wal-Mart good job there you stupid fucks), there are some significant problems, and they can all be traced to this guy:
Meet Josh Fox, the writer/director/host of the film. The initial problem is right at the start of the film, where he tries to portray himself as some sort of man of the country, giving a backstory about being born to hippie parents who built some magical house in the New York/Pennsylvania countryside. The impetus for the film, he claims, is that the gas companies offered Josh a huge amount for leasing the mineral rights on this home (for those unversed in gas, essentially the rights to drill in your land). Although the film never says he lives in the house, there's enough shots of him walking through the HALLOWED HALLS to imply this is the case. Of course, a quick google reveals that Josh actually lives in NYC as the manager of some theater
Of course, there's nothing really wrong with that. I'm smart enough to know that documentaries manipulate the audience's emotion through subtle background changes as much as any film. What is the problem is that this discrepancy is merely the start of Josh Fox doing his fucking best to convince us that he has some sort of connection to the rural instead of being some PoMo, Franzen reading dickurbanite. Josh, on the behalf of someone who has lived in rural Arkansas for almost all of his life, let me state that while you may fool your fellow cityfolk, you are not fooling anyone who regularly passes by overgrown yards with five or more broken down cars in front. In addition to being at one with the Earth and guys unironically wearing cowboy hats, he also does a fair share of wacky documentary filmmaking shots designed to tickle critics' bellies. You could probably have a drinking game/suicide pact based on taking a shot every time Fox shows some scene of environmental devastation mixed in with some calming, incongruous music track.
What bothered me more about the film is that general lack of interest in studying the science of things, and more in sensationalizing the problem. Literally the first two-third of the film are just Fox traveling to different people's houses, where they show him wellwater that is killing livestock or tap water that can be set on fire. It's striking stuff, but it goes on far longer than it needs to and doesn't really explain the at-large problems of gas drilling. And while this is the first large-scale film about the problem, it's not like there haven't been studies done about gas drilling, but the interviews Fox has with professionals rarely seem to disseminate any useful information. I guess we didn't really need you to continue that interview with the college scientist from San Antonio about how emissions from natural gas are worse than automobile emissions in the same area, Mr. Fox. I understand things had to be cut so you could show a scene where you play a banjo in front of a holding tank while wearing a gas mask. Priorities.
The movie really hits bottom when he tries to deal with people aligned with the gas interests. He's literally ignored by the actual companies. In one interview, the person eventually shrugs and leaves when Fox tries to push his luck and get to the tough questions. When he actually does get to spar with someone (the head of some western state's environment agency), Fox seems utterly blindsided by the interviewee's doublespeak. Every question leaves giant holes that the politician gleefully flies through. Eventually, in a pretty facile attempt to imitate Moore, Fox holds out a bottle of contaminated well water and goes WILL YOU DRINK THIS THE GAS COMPANIES SAID IT WAS SAFE TO DRINK, to which the interviewee metaphorically pats Fox on the head and sends him back to his seat. Shortly after this the movie ends with some New York state politicians asking genuinely tough and difficult questions to gas interests, which makes me wonder if Fox actually thought his own interview went well enough that he could compare it to the ending.
Let me repeat: you should watch Gasland. Even if you already know that fracking is a dangerous game, it's still worth watching just to see the interplay between the hipster and the rural man. The rural people featured plainly recognize Fox's origins, and play the same game with him as any group of economically challenged people do when dealing with a wealthy or influential stranger who believe that he/she is the only one that's able to help them. That's not to imply that any of the people in the film are exactly lying about their problems, but as someone who's spent alot of time in legal aid work, the worst attitude to give to disadvantaged people, and the one John Fox portrays, is the guileless "I'm helping these simple people because no one else can save them from their plight." It insults them in the presupposition that they're helpless, and there is no group more manipulative than those you presume to be powerless. You can almost hear the snickering when mystery families call Fox on his walkie talkies for super sekrit midnight meetings. Fox portrays his subjects as just good country people, and in reducing them to two-dimensional martyrs, ironically damages the power of his film.
Compare this to Winter's Bone, which is essentially Ozark Noir. Winter's Bone tells the story of a 17-year-old girl who is in charge of two younger siblings, a helplessly addled mother, and a living situation rapidly turning towards destitute. The girl finds that her father has skipped on his bail for meth production, and that what was used to pay off the bail was the family's property. What follows, like any other good noir, is a gradual journey of partial, though not total, discovery and an assorted cast of disreputable characters.
Like most of my positive reviews, it's hard to say much stuff about it, especially as it has been reviewed on the same positive points by much better critics. There were some negative reviews on rottentomatoes, largely focused on the dual tones that it was somehow exploitative against poor rural people (I'm assuming these are the same people that got huge boners for when Fox went to shots of some rancher staring into the distance of his sad natural gas habitat), and that it was just grim for grimness's sake. This is kind of a surprising accusation, since considering the subject matter, the movie is actually fairly restrained in how it handles the various aspects of backwoods ugliness.
If I have any real problems with the movie, it's that the movie slightly bungles the method to which it handles the increasing revelations. Without spoiling anything, the second half of the movies features just one too many scenes where the heroine learns things by people just visiting her and showing her what's going on. While noirs are supposed to have an aspect of events being beyond the protagonist's controls, it's a little off-putting when the reveals are literally just a series of facts placed in our lap. Granted, the heroine investigated in the first half in the movie, and there's a decent explanation for the change of tone, but it's still slightly annoying. To spoil from The Third Man, it would be as if the hero just spent the second half of the film sitting at a police station and at the end was told "oh hey we found Cotton in a sewer and shot him you can go now" CREDITS.
But don't let my stupid complaint stop you. Winter's Bone is seriously fucking excellent, and as noted above, really seems to understand the mindset of its subjects and the desolately beautiful setting that everyone is trapped in. I tried watching The Road with my mom a few days later, and just gave up halfway through to catch the last movie in Lifetime's Perfect Sunday Marathon (a literal series of movies about crazy clingy bitches going after perfect males) as all the ridiculous overt emotional manipulation that that film attempted was just worsened by remembering how genuinely affected I was by the end of Winter's Bone, and how that movie didn't have to show people crying or STARIN' HARD every five minutes to remind me I'm a human being.
(seriously, I'm not going to review The Road because I couldn't finish it, but I'm not sure if I hated it because I didn't like the book but I thought I didn't like the book because of the stupid writing style not the subject matter but now I just don't know because the biggest emotion I felt during the film was worry that this was directed by the Coen Brothers but whew it was just a crappy rip-off of their style)
Remember Blood Monkey? Probably not, since none of you people apparently ever read it. ;_; Well, for a refresher course, it was a terrible movie about a bunch of grad students getting killed by a group of hyper-intelligent chimps so terrifying to behold that the movie didn't show you them until literally the second-to-last minute of the film. It was the first film in the MANEATER series, a depressingly long list of films about X monster (ranging, according to the wiki, from earthworms to yetis to wryvens) killing people with as little a budget as possible except for having a washed-up celebrity in a supporting (but never starring) role. So, now we have THE HIVE, about a bunch of ants killing people with as little a budget as possible. Blood Monkey had F. Murray Abraham for its marquee star, and for this, we have Tom Wopat. You know, Luke Duke.
At first, The Hive was looking like basically another ugly, vile deathfest like Blood Monkey. The opening sequence features a mother and infant in some isolated jungle hut being devoured by army ants. No, they don't show the baby being eaten, but we see an ant getting ready to sink its mandibles into the crying eye of the baby, before a quick cut and a painful scream. At this point, every indication is that it's gonna be just the same shit as Blood Monkey full of painful deaths of characters we're not necessarily supposed to hate, with a total bummer ending.
WRONG.
I'm not sure if the Syfy network sat on the studio behind the Maneater series to do something less dark and morbid, but to my boredom, they managed to make The Hive into Every Syfy Original in the Past Three Years (tm). You know the pattern, because whether the subject matter is about killer ants, an evil global warming computer, or zombies, your Syfy Original is going to have certain aspects immutable traits:
1) Some sort of cool science organization. Think back to all those Originals you watched. Far more often than not, there is some sort of private organization made up of cool guys that do cool science stuff. It makes sense, as since every Syfy series is basically the same concept of a bunch of nerds doing cool adventures. Here, the group is THORAX INDUSTRIES, which seems to be what happens is you mix Terminix with Xe. They're called down to deal with the ensuing flood of army ants taking over an Philippine island, aided by actual Filipinos who don't actually know language, because the only other explanation for their diction is that the director told the actors to "sound how a racist southerner would imagine you talk." They also have embarrassing cool science guns that remove the photoshop filters that pass for the encrouching ant armies, and you will see them fire over and over and over again.
if you can imagine, the actual video looks even worse than this.
2) Teeth-gratingly terrible romance. Here, our romance is between the head of Thorax and some university professor who believes that ants should be studied, not killed! The screenwriter can't even get this wacky rivalry to work romantically, so after a few scenes of awkward bickering you just get shit like the woman slow-motion walking out of an airport and the guy giving her some cool info and then like "WELL I THINK THE PRICE OF THIS INTEL SHOULD BE A KISS ON THE MOUTH." Mock Hallmark films all you like, at least the ones I've seen weren't written by robots or 13-year-old boys (functionally the same thing).
3) A total lack of sadistic/gory kills. Aside from the opening scene, this movie is about as vanilla as a modern horror about killer ants could be. While I'm glad that there wasn't alot of weird emotional suffering, I was less glad that like four people actually die in this movie, and when they do it's just "ant filter covers person, copy/paste skeleton on top." While I understand this when the movie is about alien artifact tornadoes, but one generally expects that a movie about killer swarms of ants is going to have more than one grisly death scene (especially when the dvd box is of a bloody screaming woman covered in ants). I don't want to sound like some creepy gorehound, but designating yourself as the Maneater series usually means having more than one death in the second half of your film.
(Disclaimer: No white women are actually killed in this movie.)
(Also, sure there's lots of good reason they couldn't call this "The Colony," since that's what a group of ants is called you fucking buffoons)
3) Stupid Shoehorned Development versus Misunderstanding Government Dweebs. Granted, this is more of a hallmark of bad scifi in general, but I've never seen a Syfy original that didn't follow the whole "small incident -> bigger incident attracting notice -> realization of a completely bizarre reason for incidents -> government stooges refusing to believe reason until it is (almost) too late. Here, we discover that the ants are being controlled by an extraterrestrial intelligence resulting in a BINARY ANT COMPUTER which is basically a bunch of interlocking ant cubes with electricity coming through it, and CGI ant fists. Eventually, the heroes discover that the ants want the island, but the Filipino governor doesn't want to give in because doing that would ruin the island. So, his solution is to...nuke the island. Okay?
So, you might be wondering where Tom Wopat is in this. Well, he's the second in command in Thorax, but early in the film an ant crawls into his brain, and starts controlling him like Plankton v. Spongebob. Now, you might think this would lead to some situation where Wopat starts to subtly pave the way for the ants, but instead all the ant seems capable of doing is giving spooky flashbacks to dead bodies and forcing Wopat to mumble in every scene he's in. I honestly felt bad for the the guy, as at least Abraham in Blood Monkey got a role where he got to act all mad scientist like and wave his arms around. Wopat's inspiration seems to have been "pretend mental retardation and mug for the camera when you want to convery pain."
At the end, despite the ant still being in his brain, he somehow is firmly in the anti-ant contingent, actually smuggling in some explosive when he, hero, and heroine go to negotiate with the ants. Then the ants turn into a giant ant (instead of throwing the nuke in the water because they're not that smart after all), heroine throws a pheremone into the ants that termporarily disables them, including the ant in Wopat's brain, though this changes nothing and he explodes. Despite the explosion being weak enough that the other two are fine hiding behind a rock literally ten feet away, this still somehow forces out the super ant intelligence, which is a giant earwig of pure energy, where it goes into the sky and explodes. Also, yes, there is a the twist ending where the ant colony is rebuilding itself five minutes later.
The whole ant brain control thing is literally the only interesting part of this film, so of course the writing completely bungles it. After all, if the ant was controlling his brain, why would it be manipulating him into smuggling the bomb into his own colony? My only guess was that it was to derail the peace negotiations or cover the tracks of the other giant ant colony, that doesn't explain why the ants didn't just have him use the nuke at the human's camp, or why the ants seemed totally freaked out by the bomb. And this is all assuming the subplot was meant to have deep complex connotations, as opposed to it being there for the sake of plot convenience.
Overall, this movie is somehow worse than Blood Monkey. While the latter was a complete mess of mean-spirited ball-hiding garbage, its cruelty was at least something to fixate on. Here, we have a limp-wristed little creature feature with three plots that seem to go nowhere, generic characters that seem to disappear and reappear when the movie demands it, and CGI that, while serviceable, is used so often in the same hackneyed ways that it's the equivalent of those railing deaths from Space Mutiny.
s Why are black-centric horror films generally pretty awful? By black-centric, I mean the modern trend of hollywood equating movies with a black cast to have some sort of an "urban" bent. Generally, this sorts of films are the most generic possible plots with the addition of some terrible THUG LIFE aspect. I rarely see them in video stores, but apparently there's some dark and sinister subsection of BET that's producing them, since they seem to premiere a new take on "VAMPIRE GANGSTER HEIST INSERT WEED JOKE HERE" every month or so.
There are exceptions, of course. Most would probably point to The People Under the Stairs and Candyman, films that used the whole notion of black people being the underclass to more affluent white people and added a horror bent to that. However, I'd also argue that Tales From the Hood should also be considered a classic in this category. If the title doesn't make it obvious, Tales From the Hood is a horror anthology, divided into four stories with an extra "framing story." The latter involves three INNER CITY youths planning a drug deal at a funeral home maintained by a mortician whose face pretty well determines how things are going to end up here:
oh hai guys clarance williams iii here
The mortician, being the one with the drugs, is able to leverage his way to telling the four main stories.
Three of the four stories are pretty generic (though not really bad) social commentaries with a horror twist. The first involves a former black cop who quit the force after seeing his corrupt cop partners beat and murder a black activist. One year later, he lures the cops to the gravesite of the activist for revenge purposes. It's basically the Thin Blue Line version of Creepshow's "Father's Day," even to the point of the zombie activist (whoops spoilers I guess) having telekinetic powers. Still, it gets to the point quickly enough, and there's nothing technically wrong with this story (nor really any of the other stories).
The second story is all about domestic violence, with a kid telling his COOL AND HIP BLACK TEACHER that he's all bruised up because there's a monster beating him up. The monster, of course, is his stepfather who has a tattoo of MONSTER on his arm. Monster, monster, monster. Happy ending due to child apparently having power to kill people by ripping up his drawings of them.
The final story involves a evil gangster who is arrested for his crimes, but takes an offer of freedom by participating in a "rehabilitation program" that is basically the Ludovico Treatment, but with more spinning chairs and nurses in weird latex fetish uniforms. I'm not sure whether it or the Monster story is the worst one of the bunch, as while the final story features some shocking and provoking actual photographs of violence against blacks, the impact is diluted both by the pictures being intercut of footage of guys in bandannas jumping around firing guns, and the program director (who is basically a solemn Whoopi Goldberg) telling the gangster, "Cain was the first murderer, Crazy K. He killed his brother HOW MANY BROTHERS HAVE YOU SLAIN?!?!?!" I understand the message is that black-on-black violence is just furthering the cause of racists, but there has to have been a better way to express it. Eventually, the gangster fails the treatment, and is sent back to the moment he was arrested, except now instead of being arrested, he's killed by the three gangster in the framing story.
Oh yeah, and then when the gangsters are finally revealed the coffins where the drugs are purportedly kept, they instead find their corpses and oh wait the mortician is actually satan.
Ultimately, I just wanted to use this review to talk about the third story, which is easily one of my favorite short horror tales, KKK Comeuppance." When you open with a political ad stating: "You can give it any name you want. The fact is, affirmative action, quotas, reparations, all mean one thing: Another qualified individual won't get a job or an education simply because he's not the right color. I thought that's what we were trying to get away from," dissolving to the picture of the whitest person imaginable, you know whoever wrote this had some fun. The whitest man alive is running for senate, was a former Klansman, and every thing he says is basically what I unironically heard while living in Arkansas. He's also living in a house that was the site of a former slave massacre which resulted in alot of displaced souls until a later owner transferred all of the souls into dolls. There's even a picture hey why is one of the dolls whited out???
this was basically what reading highlights as a kid was like
Like all killer doll stories, we get scenes of the doll inanimate (though still able to trip an Uncle Tom image consultant down the stairs), randomly appearing in spooooooky places. Eventually it reappears on the staircase, prompting KKK Guy to declare that "THERE WILL BE NO REPARATIONS" while throwing a bowl at the doll, and declaring war on a "VOODOO BITCH" while impaling a painting of her with her dolls with an American Flag. Eventually the doll attacks directly, but is quickly subdued, and tied to a dartboard, though KKK guys uses a shotgun in lieu of darts. All looks well as "NOT EVEN SOME VOODOO NEGRESS BITCH SPELL CAN OVERCOME THE POWER OF A DOUBLE BARRELLED SHOTGUN," but the painting now suddenly has roughly six dolls whited out. White supremacy oopsie, as now he's dealing with a whole bunch of "YOU LITTLE...NIGGLINS." Also, the original doll returns, and the double barrelled shotgun isn't so helpful now, so he retreats to the previous room only to well
(seeing this as a 10-year-old really had a profound effect of my attitude towards other races)
In perhaps the most subtle bit of writing ever, KKK Man covers himself with the American flag as the dolls approach and you get the rest. Again, easily the best story of the bunch, in acting, writing, and general horror movie vibe, like a top-tier Tales from the Crypt episode. That's the complement, by the way.
Again, it's not really a must-see horror film, and one could even call it a series of spooky morality tales with the exception of KKK Comeuppance, but it's still probably the most socially challenging horror film about black people (and really in general, unless you count silly WHITE PEOPLE PROBLEMS), which is fairly depressing when you think about it.
I was planning to do a conventional review of Wishmaster IV, but a few days ago an anonymous reader sent me a rather disturbing message and attachment. I've sat on it a few days, as it involves a private communication on October 01, 2001, between who can only assume to be Wishmaster IV's director, Chris Angel under the handle "BIGANGEMON," and the screenwriter, John Benjamin Martin, under the handle "Mbird." I have not edited the conversation in any way except for the sake of clarity.
BIGANGEMON (14:29) MARTIN MAN WE GOT A PROBLEM BIGANGEMON (14:29) MARTIN GET ON HURRY Mbird (14:30) What's the problem, Chris? BIGANGEMON (1431) OH HOLD ON THE NEW EPISODE OF DIGIMON TAMERS IS ON HOLD ON A SECOND HOLY SHIT Mbird (14:31) Okay. BIGANGEMON (15:05) okay sorry man digimon is awesome i wish renamon was real Mbird (15:06) Who is a renamon? BIGANGEMON (15:08) don't worry about that man we got a problem Artisan didn't like the script I offered for Wishmaster IV and now I need a new idea HURRY Mbird (15:08) What didn't they like? BIGANGEMON (15:09) they were like "you just copy pasted new names onto the wishmaster iii script" and i said "well i'm filming it at the same time as that what did you think you hollywood fatcats but whatever I've got john bman martin on my side he'll think of something" BIGANGEMON (15:11) SO THINK OF SOMETHING PLZ MAN Mbird (15:13) Well, actually, it's sort of funny. I just watched this really good sequel to Hellraiser called "Hellraiser: Inferno," which sort of took the basic themes around the Hellraiser movies and created something different but really good with that mythos. Maybe something like that? BIGANGEMON (15:13) wait like a romance Mbird (15:14) No, it was still horror, but it was about the notions of sin and guilt that are in every Hellraiser film, or at least every good one. BIGANGEMON (15:15) I know that fgt i meant like a horror/romance idea omg hold on Mbird (15:15) okay. BIGANGEMON (15:24) So what about a movie where the Jim falls in love with a woman?? Mbird (15:27) You mean a Djinn, right? I don't know exactly what you mean. BIGANGEMON (15:30) yeah djinn whatever so yeah tell me what you think about this BIGANGEMON (15:33) so we can have this hot woman whose with this sexy biker, but then the biker get in some accident and he's crippled and crippled people don't want to have sex right??? Mbird (15:34) I don't think that's right, Chris. BIGANGEMON (15:34) whatever don't want to make those crips mad rite lol BIGANGEMON (15:37) well anyway he doesn't want to have sex and there can be like a lawyer whose working on the case and he has the big ruby for some reason and that wakes the djinn up Mbird (15:38) I'm afraid I don't really understand. Why would he have the stone? BIGANGEMON (15:40) I dunno man ur the writer lol whatever well just have some nude scenes that'll distract the cripples lol
Mbird (15:41) So, I assume the lawyer get possessed and everything by the Djinn. What were you thinking next? BIGANGEMON (15:43) okay first he will get her to wish for the case to be settled and there can be a scene where the djinn calls the other lawyer and makes him sign the contract and then kill himself Mbird (15:43) Wait, the Djinn kills the lawyer he's possessing? BIGANGEMON (15:44) no man lol the other opposing lawyer Mbird (15:46) No offense, but that doesn't make alot of sense. I mean, why would wishing for the case to be settled involve the death of the opposing lawyer you know what nevermind. What's next? BIGANGEMON (15:48) Well then a bunch of scenes where the girl and djinn flirt for like 30 minutes, maybe some kills I guess but really I want this to be all about the romance you know a real beuty and the beast scenario oh yeah and she can have her second wish be the wheelchair guy walking again Mbird (15:49) I can kind of see that, yeah. So wait, does he have the husband walk off a staircase into a fire or something? BIGANGEMON (15:50) No i was just thinking he writhes around on the floor for like ten minutes and then he walks Mbird (15:50) Uh, okay. Mbird (15:51) But wait, if he walks again, wouldn't that ruin the whole lawsuit even if there was a settlement? BIGANGEMON (15:53) rofl who cares BIGANGEMON (15:54) so okay, here's the clincher she and the djinn are about to kiss but she stops and says something liek "I wish I could love you for who you are." Mbird (15:55) ...so the Djinn wins? BIGANGEMON (15:56) Nope cause see for who he really is he'd have to turn into the monster form and that's impossible or something Mbird (15:57) huh? BIGANGEMON (15:58) Well we can have some other djinns appear and they can explain it BIGANGEMON (15:59) oooooh other idea BIGANGEMON (15:59) remember how I had the angel michael in the third movie and that was so great right? Mbird (16:00) You know I was meaning to talk to you about that. BIGANGEMON (16:01) well what if we had another angel called the HUNTER who appears and tries to kill the woman because then you can't have evil djinn take over BIGANGEMON (16:03) and meanwhile djinn tries to figure out how to get the girl to lover her while he's starting to love her back oh man Mbird (16:05) Yeah, like the Djinn can go to the girl's friend and try to figure it out over coffee. BIGANGEMON (16:05) YEAH MAN THAT'S GREAT BIGANGEMON (16:06) WRITING THAT SHIT DOWN IN MY NOTEBOOK RIGHT NOW Mbird (16:08) Good to hear. So, you mentioned a Hunter Angel trying to kill the girl to prevent the Djinn takeover. How does that figure into things? BIGANGEMON (16:08) sword fight with djinn in a park BIGANGEMON (16:08) hunter loses BIGANGEMON (16:09) also thinking of having a 15 minute strip club scene Mbird (16:14) So, how were you thinking of ending this? BIGANGEMON (16:15) uh, like another awesome sex scene between girl and the djinn, but girl still don't want to love, then a bunch of the other djinns appear and make bookcases fall down BIGANGEMON (16:17) then other guy appears, makes wish to have way to kill djinn, so he gets the hunter's sword right but djinn kills him anyway but then she pushes him into the sword while it's still in the other guy and then she walks away I guess BIGANGEMON (16:18) so yeah just put this all together and give it to me in a week and this'll be our big break man MBird (16:20) i wish i was dead BIGANGEMON (16:20) GRANTED LOL BIGANGEMON (16: 27) john? BIGANGEMON (16: 56) u there man? BIGANGEMON (16:58) whatever gonna watch pokemon now
NOTES YOU SHOULDN'T CARE ABOUT:
IF IT'S NOT CLEAR TO BABIES, I am joking about the chat conversation. I mock Angel because I can mock, but this certainly isn't meant to reflect on whatever the guy's actual personality is. And I doubt he's actually into Digimon, as there's not a successful person alive that is also a fan of that show. However, what I put down is actually how the movie went down. Yeah, it's all about the Djinn falling in love, including seeing her best friend for LUV ADVICE (don't worry, it culminated her in wishing for "killer sex," which included some really fucking gross crunching sound effects in a place that wasn't shown to the audience).
This is -easily- the worst Wishmaster film. While there's something to be said for Angel's attempt to do something new to the franchise besides WHOOPS THREE WISHES DEATH, the execution is so goddamned terrible I wish they had done the typical horror sequel deviation and done something like "Wishmaster in the Space Ghetto." Editing is jerky, plotlines go nowhere, and perhaps worst of all for a movie like this, there like 3 or 4 wish kills in the entire film. I mocked the lame characterization in 3, but there's literally no characterization in 4, unless you count everyone's blatant stupidity. I guess if you're 14, the literally ridiculous amounts of nudity (I wasn't joking about the 15-minute strip club scene) sort of make up for this, but to the rest of us it's just going to be like someone dropped a generic Wishmaster film and a generic late-night skin flick into some magical film mixer (for maximum effectiveness, imagine some stereotypical jewish guy panicking around the machine as lights shoot out of it with appropriately wacky music). I couldn't even find any appropriate shots to post, as there's nothing interesting to see in this movie. There's exactly three memorable scenes in the film:
1) Shortly after the Djinn takes over the lawyer's body, he visits the girl and guy, and after small talk, the latter two leave the room. For whatever reason, the Djinn takes an apple from some fruit stand, bites into it, then puts it back on the stand. This is what literally accounts for development in Wishmaster IV.
2) Closing line upon Djinn impaling a bouncer, then throwing him into dumping: "Now, is it Mondays and Wednesdays, or Tuesdays or Thursdays?"
3)
NEXT TIME: I'll try to review a movie I actually enjoy!
Good Christ. Lisa's columns on Kotaku were pandering, awful shit, but at least I only had to get past the one HEY LOOK AT ME GIRL GAMER picture per article to just laugh at the terrible humor content. Now, of course, there's her new series on The Escapist, where bad video game humor goes in the hopes that it will get legions of mouthbreathing fanboys like Yahtzee and TGWTG.
Lisa's new video series is, get ready, a weekly Top 5. On one of the few message boards I go to on a regular basis, there was a former staff contributor from Cracked who quit from the soul-sucking preoccupation that alot of mainstream humor has with Top X humor. According to him (and it's hard to argue with him with the evidence), nothing text-based can get remotely as much traffic as a Top X list. Well, except for a Top XXX list that involves breasts. So, I'd like you to guess what Lisa was wearing, and how often she hopped while slightly bent over in her 5-minute review.
There are only really two mysteries to Lisa at this point.
1) Who are these fucking nerds kidding? Reading over Escapist comments for Lisa's video was slightly akin to standing next to the aisle of a porn theater that has turned its lights on, mid-feature, to an audience of well-to-do gentlemen. Nobody is lascivious or perverted, but instead all follow the same basic feature: "Boy, I was worried she was just another pretty face, but instead she was really funny and made me forget how I would tie her up and force her to lick my Limited Edition Master Chief helmet!" Oops, that last part was my genetic traits picking up pathetic mental energies over the internet.
Maybe you giant babies love lists so much that you would watch them even if it was done by some beard commander enchilada supreme you'd still laugh and go post your feeble comments. But I cannot, nay, I REFUSE to believe that anyone would have given a shit about Foiles' video if it had not been presented by an attractive petite. Ignore Lisa's awkward arm movements, and try to focus your mind towards the actual content. Every joke is basically just "hey video games." Lisa can't even sustain a Penny-Arcade HM VIDEO GAMES ARE QUITE DISPARATE FROM REAL LIFE joke. Hell, even her list was stupid: Only a complete poser would have a "Top Five Sexiest Glasses" and not include Lucca, and sure as hell would not have fucking DUKE NUKEM or WESKER. Waaaaaaagh.
But no, I'm sure Escapist bootlickers would steadfastly refuse that Foiles's bimbo act would have any part in their enjoyment of this piece of high-class entertainment. A few tried to argue that Lisa was actually parodying the bimbo/Top 10 aspect, to which I say, "No she didn't, you pathetic liar."
2) How much of this shittyness is planned? Could Lisa really be a sort of analogue of the female writers of times past, pretending a deference and lower intellect while in reality she is truly a greater wit than us all? Well, change "truly a greater wit than us all" to "moderately clever," and I'd say it's certainly possible. Even if she's not really funny, she certainly got the pathetic nerd business landscape down, having formed a fanbase on Kotaku, IGN, and now Escapist. I'm sure she's already in negotiations with TGWTG (EDIT: whoops, angry joe, truth to say i've never actually seen a thing on tgwtg because i'm not a dick nose, song and dancen).
Now, returning to that Cracked writer, you can see where I'm going. Lisa could very well be aware that game journalism and humor is ultimately a fucked up horrible thing to begin with, so why not put in minimal effort that, paradoxically will get the most profitable responses? As I've noted before, the great thing about slutting out for nerds is that you have to show less skin than you would for most other audiences, as long as you can pretend to like Street Fighter. And again, while I rage about her lack of humor, it's not like there's really any funny video game humor, and columns are apparently a binary choice between "hey do you like games where you can kick really high girls rule ^_^" and "THE SOOTHING DIALECTIC IN A ONE CREDIT CLEAR IN DODONPACHI." At least there's more honesty in the former, especially within its audience. I'm not saying she's spoofing the whole game girl bimbo thing, but rather that she refined it into some sort of plutonium powered laser beam that is currently burrowing into the earth's core, where her Amazon wishlist has been chained for a millenia.
Or maybe she's just a dumb idiot. Either way, this is your New Heaven Salesman, and Eagles of Death Metal sound just a little too much like Led Zeppelin to enjoy it.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee says execution is the appropriate punishment for the leaker who provided thousands of State Department documents to the website WikiLeaks.
“Whoever in our government leaked that information is guilty of treason, and I think anything less than execution is too kind a penalty,” Huckabee, a likely presidential candidate, told reporters Monday during a stop at The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Library to sign copies of his new children’s book, “Can’t Wait Till Christmas!”
What is it about horror sequels that are filmed concurrently? Return of the Living Dead 4 &5 were filmed at the same time, and now, as I decide to review Wishmaster 3, I find out that both it and Wishermaster 4 were also filmed at the same time.
Now, it's not that Wishmaster 1 & 2 were shining achievements of movie genius. For all intents, the original was Wes Craven reallocating some of his Nightmare on Elm Street profits into a new "Monster whose power is creating interesting special effects." Unlike Nightmare on Elm Street, Craven skipped any attempt to make the Wishmaster, an evil genie/djinn who tricks people into wishing, then FLIPS THE WISH SCRIPT. The plot for both movies is negligible, but it had a couple of things going for it, primarily a great deal of awesome SFX setpieces, and the acting of Andrew Divoff as the Djinn, who perfectly captured the lighly gruesome tone of the movie. If you're curious, here's a compilation of the death scenes from the firsttwo movies. The second movie is worse than the first, though I'd argue that Divoff's role, and the intelligence of the film makers to make the sequel basically a complete retread of the first, still makes it entertaining.
Wishmaster 3 focuses on Diane, a TA or something at a college who suffered a Big Tragedy as a kid where her parents were blown up in a car accident that she witnessed. There's a terrible romantic subplot where she can't say that she loves her boyfriend (who is taking the class she is TA-ing in). In a giant warning flag about the level of cinematic excellence, after a nightmare in the opening scene, Diane goes outside just so we can see her erect nipples.
Diane also has to work at the college Museum of Creepy Artifacts, and for some reason is allowed to look at some box that is a direct rip-off of the Lament Configuration from Hellraiser. Djinn is eventually released, and possesses Diane's creepy professor, and here we get to the first big problem of the movie. Jason Connery isn't a terrible actor, but he lacks the crazy bug-eyed scenery chewing of Divoff, and his facial hair just makes him look like a metrosexual version of Robert Patrick from Double Dragon.
The confrontation between the Djinn and Creepy Professor is one of the better/worse parts of the movie. After Diane leaves the Professor after his terrible come-on, the Djinn just appears and glides across the floor. Djinn demands to find the person woke him (the central theme of every Wishmaster theme being that the person who unleashed the Djinn must make three wishes, thereupon a shitload of Djinn will awake and rule the earth), and he refuses. Djinn first offers him some hot women, but when he hesitates, we get this:
I'm not really sure what the Djinn is going for here. He's blackmailing the professor, but it's never made clear how the Djinn would approach the Sociology Chair and Board of Directors with this revelation, since he's a giant evil hell beast. What's weirder about all this is that the script implies that the professor understands what the Djinn is all about with "granting wishes." But whatever, he cracks and decides to go for a carefully worded wish of "two women I find most attractive in the world to be in love with me." This leads to what I assume is Connery's reason for being in the film, as two naked chicks start writhing all over him. Of course, they're actually demons, which doesn't make sense in the context of the wish.
We follow with an awful sex scene between Diane's best friend and her boyfriend behind a couch where a guy is watching MTV (which also gives this movie two and a half nude scenes by the 30 minute mark). Eventually, the Djinn goes to the administration building to find Diane's address, but is cockblocked by an elderly secretary who won't give him Diane's transcript because it's confidential (which is surprisingly accurate, I guess the movie researched FERPA), but of course she wishes that "all these files would go up in flames so I could get the hell out of here." GUESS HOW THIS TURNS OUT, CLEVER VIEWER. It's actually better than you think, as the woman proceeds to open up a file cabinet and get a jet of flames right to the face.
WOOMPH
What follows is 20 minutes of Diane going SOMETHING IS WRONG and everyone going NOPE YOU CRAZY, until for some reason the Djinn reveals himself in front of Diane's boyfriend. He and Diane flee to a church, where the Djinn is waiting for them, along with Random Slut #1. Diane refuses to wish citing that the Djinn can't hurt them without a wish being made, to which the Djinn is all "thas cool oh btw Random Slut #1 already made a wish wanted to lose some weight want to wish nao? :3" She refuses at first, so we get a vomiting scene that less gross than that from City of the Living Dead. Diane, being a retarded bint, gives in and wishes to end Random Slut #1's pain, which goes about how you'd think.
She then makes the second wish, which suddenly propels this movie from a crappy sequel to utter disaster: "I wish to invoke the spirit of St. Michael to help me." Yes. That is the wish. The Djinn actually grants this one, but apparently the spirit has to inhabit a body. Initially she gets possessed, but then the boyfriend shoves her out of the way. And lo, Greg the Boyfriend gets blue contacts, and super-deep voice, and a curvy-bladed sword that was bought for 59.99 at some craft store. Djinn transforms into his demon form, and a pretty goddamned embarassing fight proceeds, where the Djinn throws a pew at Michael, and Michael reverses with a armflip into the altar.
LOOK AT THIS GODDAMNED SWORD
The final 30 minutes of the film alternate between Diane and Michael the Angel running from the Djinn (occasionally with Michael berating Diane about her dumb fucking decisions), while he randomly kills her friends. The rundown includes:
Random Slut #2 wishes for heart to be broken, which features a really bad cross-section of her heart exploding, like a Ghost being exploded in Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt. Which basically makes me wish I was watching that instead (Stocking is mai waifu).
NON DES KAAAAAAAAH
Diane's best friend's boyfriend gets beaten up by the Djinn, eventually wishing for the Djinn to "Blow Him," which culminates in him getting floated in front of the Djinn, who literally blows him into a bull statue.
Finally the best friend, which features the most brutal kill in the series. Djinn chases her into some animal research lab. She hides from him in some cabinet, and for some reason, the Djinn just gives up and leaves the room. In possibly the worst decision of the series, she calls Diane and says "I wish there was somewhere to hide." For some reason this instantly summons the Djinn, who carries her across the lab and stuffs her head into a rat cage, telling her "NO ONE WILL FIND YOU IN HERE LOL." Now, while it's not like the Wishmaster series has high logic standards to uphold, but I don't think being stuffed in a rat cage really works as a place to hide in any connotation, especially as Diana immediately finds her.
The conclusion of the film is another stupid fight scene between the djinn and Michael duelling with the sword and a flag pole, culminating in Michael cutting off the Djinn's hand (which of course instantly regenerates). The two flee in a car, Djinn jumps on it, and ultimately more stupid shit just happens until OH IRONY SHE CRASHES THE CAR THE SAME WAY AS HER PARENTS DIED. But this time she rescues Michael! In probably the only awesome scene of the movie, the Djinn, whose entire body is broken, slowly realigns his broken legs and arms while making cooing sounds.
Oh and in the end Diana realizes that she could just kill herself before making the third wish, but then the Djinn catches her arm just before she throws herself off a building. She then telepathically grab Michael's sword, stabs the Djinn, both fall and die but Michael just casts Life 3 and yay everyone lives again.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WISHMASTER III
So, what is there to say? If you get the mien to watch a movie directed by someone actually named Chris Angel, use that handy thumbnail function on the Netflix instant viewer to find the death scenes, as there is nothing else going for this movie. Still, it at least had the wisdom to retain the whole basic plotline, which is better than I can say for Wishmaster IV, which is literally a romance involving the Djinn. NOPE. NOT KIDDING.
You know, most intelligent people probably guess that with Tim's columns getting way less viewcounts than Lisa Foiles's, or hell, even Leigh Alexander's, we were going to see some pandering. The column last month about MMOs might have been pandering, I'm not sure. Tim doesn't really seem to know how to pander, considering that the central MMO of that column was Final Fantasy XI, an game that I think even All Points Bulletin players felt sorry for even as their experience imploded in hilarious mismanagement. I didn't read the entire column, and what I don't read I don't really remember, except that Tim had a Strange Opinion about the MMO experience and tried to relate it to something else. I'm sure Tim was physically pained writing a column about it all the same, considering his hatred of the masses and slow-paced loot grinding games in general (his review of Diablo II on one of his many unimportant sites was apoplectic at the whole slot-machine aspect of the game).
But whatever. Tim had a month to recover, watch as Lisa Foiles' newest column (which was basically her stealing that women's heroine stereotype flowchart from Jezebel (which they stole from another blog, to be fair) and going "video game heroines are strange!") rise to EIGHTY THOUSAND HITS, and plan a new idea! Then as he actually admits in so many words he realized his ideas are horrible (in his own words, his column this month wasn't psychedelic enough, which implies that the limits of Tim's mindscaping has been pressing his hands against his eyes real hard) and no one really pays attention to his columns except to say "oh so long." A real change was needed So this time, he was going to go Web 2.0, making mental air quotes while preparing his date his some japanese girl who mentioned liking Lucky Star.
Yes, he's taking questions from the audience using Twitter about video games. No, his answers are not limited to 160 characters.
The first thing I noticed in the column was a pretty sad attempt to validate himself as an important gaming person:
He mentions that he has 1600 twitter followers. To this, I sort of want to pat Tim on the head, as I'm pretty sure that if I opened up a twitter account that was me posting tridaily hollywood actresses I wanted to play metal slug with, I could get 2000 followers within a month with a minimum of whoring.
His first question is a wackily pedantic question from Bryan Lee O'Malley. Who is that? It's the guy who wrote the pretty good Volumes 1-3 of "Scott Pilgrim," then went on to write the absolutely miserable Volumes 4-6 of "Scott Pilgrim." In Tim's defense, he claims that this was the first question he got FOR REAL, though whether he's lying or not, the only sure truth is that I feel alot better about not actually buying any of the Scott Pilgrim books.
The whole "oh I'm such a bad writer in an ironic way" I talked about in blogs past is out in full force.
To be fair to Tim, none of the questions asked him are any good. I literally can't tell whether a good number of them are the most sycophantic queries ever, or pure sarcasm (not that this would have any effect on Tim's answer). POUR EXAMPLUH:
Note that half of the questions and answers significantly involved the whole sticky friction thing. That column was Tim's big break, and I'm not sure if Tim really understands that the whole of his Kotaku fanbase seems to be around the DISCOVERED CONCEPT that sometimes a game slows down in order to heighten enjoyment. It's something akin a writer who attempts to create great works of genius, and is primarily known by 90% of his fans for being the originator of a fairly clever fart limerick.
Of course, it's not like Tim is pounding out works of genius. Here's him talking about Vanquish, a 4-hour third person shooter that was noticed for like five minutes because some guys who worked on Resident Evil 4 or 5 left Capcom to work on it:
I'm talking about American football. Nearly no one outside of America knows what American football is, or, at least, they don't know enough about it to be able to spot its nuances in other works of media.
Gears of War is simultaneously a game of inches and a game about linebacker-sized dudes Going For It on fourth and sixty-five. The "stop and pop" cover-based game mechanic stresses defense over offense. The medium-term goal of Gears of War is to clear every enemy in the area. The short-term goal is usually to clear every enemy you can clear from your current position. Your current position is either the only place you can be without dying at this very moment or a place you've already been. Gears of War is about "painting" the battlefield with safety. You stop, you pop, you earn a better grasp on more strategic position, you move forward.
Vanquish, on the other hand, is more soccer than football. It's almost as though the game designers understood how integral football was to Gears of War, and decided that, in order to make a "Japanese" — or, well, "Not Completely American" — third person shooter, they could possibly start with soccer.
Soccer, like wearing skinny jeans, is a sport that is more or less about ball placement. A skilled player can put the ball anywhere on the field, from any time, from any position.
Well, the one place a typical player can't put the ball simply through a little application of will is, of course, the inside of the goal. That's the tricky part. Scoring a goal in soccer is a momentous occasion. In American football, you can score a goal by soldiering forward and not messing up. In soccer, you're going to end up face-to-face with a goalkeeper — essentially, a rival with a terrain advantage. You couldn't make it harder to score a goal in soccer if you put the goal on top of a hill.
So, ball placement: soccer is about choosing where to put the ball at any given moment. When choosing where to put the ball, the player has to consider the position of his other teammates and their formation, and his rivals and their position. Soccer is about positioning the ball with a little preemptive thought about the path each play will take. As your rivals out-think and out-maneuver you, play after play and plan after plan fall abandoned by the wayside, scrapped in favor of new tactics.
Vanquish is like soccer in that the player controls both the athlete and the ball. At any time during any given firefight, the player can use a dash ability to sprint, near-invincible, to and from any position on the battlefield from or to any other position.
In short, from anywhere on the battlefield, you can put the hero anywhere.
I hope you didn't read that. Here's what we can glean from this passage:
Tim knows literally less about football than Klosterman.
He is sort of right about Gears of Wars being a series of "plays," but holy shit I don't know where he's coming from with Vanquish. I've only watched the game, but the main feature is an easy to use propulsion system on your hero's man-sized mecha suit that allows him to jet around the battlefield. It's a neat little idea, but that has nothing to do with soccer, which is just as strictly play and team-based as American football. The notion of a superstar being able to control a chaotic, closed-in field is closer to lacrosse or hockey, but of course, those aren't cool sports, right?
Mario is like bowling because friction friction friction.
Here's some other snippets, bolded for the "come on what man don't do this" parts:
It most certainly could be. In fact, the creator has even called it that in so many words. When I talked to Gran Turismo director Kazunori Yamauchi in 2009, he said that the game is, in fact, a role-playing game. The player obtains licenses, earning access to new circuits and cars. He earns money by winning races. He spends money to purchase cars.
Cars are like weapons — they can only accentuate the player's innate abilities. Unlike in a standard role-playing game, where the character gains power and ability by simply playing ceaselessly and persistently, in Gran Turismo the up-leveling happens inside the player's brain as he unlocks new brain-places and connects gaps between previously existing patches of wisdom.
Surmounting a challenge in Gran Turismo requires knowledge of yourself, the challenge, and the tool — the car — you use. You have to learn each car's personality in about as much detail as you get familiar with the life and back-story of a character in an RPG.
In 2004, Yamauchi told me that, during his years as a young gamer, he much preferred Choplifter to Super Mario Bros., because he could imagine it was him inside that helicopter. Maybe Choplifter is a role-playing game, too.
"Role-playing game" is a loose term. It doesn't just mean dungeons, dragons, menus, and monsters. It can mean a game where you have to invest a little bit of your own brain in the name of pretending what's happening in the world of the game is "real" or "important".
Sports games and role-playing games have more in common than you might ever think at first. Shingo "Sea Bass" Takatsuka, director of the Winning Eleven soccer series, told me that he considers the Winning Eleven series "role-playing games". He says that, outside basic knowledge of game controls, attack plans, and the basic rules of soccer, the key to playing the game well is understanding the personalities and playing styles of individual players. Players' abilities are represented by a few convenient integers, though outside of that, players with similar ability ratings might be capable of doing completely different things. Mastering the game requires understanding who can do what, and how.
I feel like I've hinted at this in a previous column: I want to make a game that makes someone feel the way they feel when they look at their chat client's buddy list and see a little pencil icon by your name. They sit there, wondering what you're about to say. And then, maybe, you never say anything. Maybe you went to bed after typing a letter — maybe "a", maybe "k" — into a chat message and then not pressing enter. That's cooler than "poking" someone on Facebook.
(I WISH I COULD MAKE THIS EVEN BOLDER)
There are others questions with face-slapping moments, but you've got the idea at this point, right? I've tried to exhaustively summarize Tim Roger's columns before, but it's just impossible. Not because I'm mad or anything, but they're just so underwhelming to read, despite angry nerd views to the contrary. It's like going to a restaurant that some friends worship, and others go on chowhound or eopinions to write nasty hateful reviews about and gleefully show them to you, and you just get a watery soup and a waiter out of a Tom Petty song.
I don't want to bring up icypalm (ho ho) again after all of his naifs pumped up my blog statistics, but while I hate his columns...actually, that's the thing. His writing is pretty terrible, but at least there's a sort of adventurous, gleeful misanthropic vibe to them that makes it fun to hate them. Tim Roger's writing, especially his stuff on Kotaku, is impenetrable dreck dumbed down for a site audience that really wants to know more about two feet tall ceramic sculptures of Tifa. Now he's clearly given up any sort of rock-star gaming journalist aspect and pandering for subscribers on fucking Twitter. What's next, a blog on 1up so he can compete with Jeremy Parish on who is the bigger early-2000s gamer has-been? I can't care about this shit anymore, and neither should you (at least until he starts getting catty towards women or something).
