So this past Friday, I was treated to a late-night showing of the new Tim Burton offering, Alice in Wonderland. I’d really been looking forward to this movie, and didn’t do any reviewing of the content beforehand, so what I got in the theatre was not at all what I walked in expecting. What did I get? Read on, my friend, read on!

I’d like to preface this with the statement that, despite how I may paint it, this is NOT a 100% bad, awful, icky film. However, I don’t think it’s worth the cost of a full-price ticket. I’ll tell you right now, wait until this flick hits the dollar theatres, or else get it off Netflix later. It’s worth seeing at least once, but you’re really not missing anything if you opt to just watch it on the small screen.

And so, let us proceed with my take on Alice in EmoWonderland.

In case you hadn’t guessed from this entry so far, the movie was awash in emo. The original books were rather dark in nature, but I don’t recall them being a wannabe-goth teen’s “moist sleep-vision.” What you get from this movie is the Mad Hatter and his tea party guests mourning the loss of the old days before the Red Queen took over their fair land and turned it into a grey, foggy, overcast, post-apocalyptic wasteland. Very little action to be had. A lot of depressed people shuffling around acting depressed because their lives are depressing, and it depresses them.

The happily-absurd dialogue that made the books so endearing was almost entirely stricken from the film, leaving the audience with nothing but the ever-present emo to cling onto. An attempt at the entertaining insanity of the original stories was made with the Mad Hatter, but it seems the film’s writers confused “constantly-changing accent” with “mental instability.” One second Johnny Depp wath thlurring hith wordth juth like thith; the next, he was breaking into a brogue that lay somewhere between Ireland and Scotland; the next-next, he was attempting to sound like a classic English gentleman. And his behaviour, ranging from childlike whimsy to nearly homicidal, combined with his creepy fixation on Alice that apparently began when he met her as a six-year-old girl, just made many of us in my group uncomfortable. The only character that really captured the story’s original spirit was the happily-macabre, cheeky Cheshire Cat, voiced by Stephen Fry, who had a chuckle-inducing obsession with the Mad Hatter’s hat, to the point of repeatedly asking to inherit it on the eve of the Hatter’s intended–and of course failed–execution. But the Cat had hardly any face time in the movie at all (and I don’t mean that his face was just invisible, either).

The scenery was, as I just mentioned, pretty much all drab, done in greys and browns, with the exception of a few garden scenes. The Red Queen’s palace was cast in deep reds and browns that still somehow managed to look muted. The only colour that wasn’t washed out was in the White Queen’s domain, where bright pink cherry blossom trees and white castle walls offered a little bit o’ fresh air, a nice break from the greyness of the rest of the environment. And with the exception of the White Queen’s realm, most of the buildings in the movie were decayed and crumbling, another nod to the whole “post-apocalyptic wasteland” theme that is so overdone in modern popular media. The Red Queen is BAD for the realm. We GET it, okay? We got it within the first five minutes of Alice’s trip down the rabbit-hole!

This is pretty much the most colour you’ll see in the setting for about 90% of the movie.

And as if to drive in the depressing point that this ain’t your grandmother’s Wonderland even further, the movie informs us that the name of the realm is actually UNDERland, and Alice just misheard it. (Being a Venture Bros. fan, I was VERY disappointed that Baron Ünderbheit didn’t show up at this point, hehe. At least he would’ve introduced some ACTION into Underland.)

The story is almost nonexistent. I’d include a spoiler warning, but there’s not enough substance to this movie’s story for it to HAVE spoilers. The adult Alice runs away from an undesirable suitor who’s just proposed and falls down the rabbit hole to the fantasy land she visited as a child. Everyone tells her she’s going to kill the Jabberwocky, she insists she’s not going to kill the Jabberwocky, but then she decides she IS going to kill the Jabberwocky after all. Then she kills the Jabberwocky and immediately goes home. The end. There are no surprises, no plot twists. Pretty much every plot point can be seen coming from the moment the relevant character is introduced. The main aim of the movie is supposed to be how Alice stops doing what others want her to do and learns to make her own choices…by doing exactly what everyone wants her to do in fighting the Jabberwocky. Yeah, I didn’t really get it either.

Also, Burton claims this film is his take on the books, not a sequel. But it’s made clear in the movie that it takes place after the books because Alice has already BEEN to W/Underland and had the adventures we know and love from the stories and various film adaptations. So, um. Dude, it’s a sequel. And giving a sequel the same name as the original usually has (the full title of the first book being Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) rather confused me at first since I went into the film content-blind.

Now, maybe this bit is coming too little too late, but I wanted to end on a high–well, highER–note, and re-state that I didn’t flat-out hate the movie. Drabness aside, the visuals are otherwise appealing, with that twisted quality in both characters and environment that is immediately identifiable as Tim Burton’s touch. Some of the CG stands out as CG, such as horses that don’t move quite like real horses, but most of it is so well-done that the little kinks don’t matter. I may not be a huge fan of most of the guy’s movies, but I do love the special effects that get stuck into his films.

Stephen Fry makes a brilliant Cheshire Cat. Alan Rickman as the Caterpillar is just perfect, and I really wish we’d gotten to see more of him. And Christopher Lee as the voice of the Jabberwocky? Lee excels in everything he does, so I’ve no complaints here! Anne Hathaway, the White Queen, was JUST the right amount of sugary-sweet and twisted, making her one of the more interesting protagonists.

Look, I know the good points about this movie are mostly superficial, but sometimes that’s all you need. I think it’s worth seeing at least once–just not at full ticket price, a sentiment that was shared by the other ten people in my group. What story there IS is too depressing to appeal to children, but too nonexistent to appeal to adults. I think the flick was best summed up by something that happened when the eleven of us were standing outside the theatre afterwards. One of my friends remarked, “Y’know, if I was an emo wannabe-goth teenager, I’d probably think that movie was the bomb diggity or whatever.” At that moment, a group of teenagers came out of the theatre, decked out in black fishnet stockings far too tight for their chunky legs and wearing the Hot Topic version of black goth-gear (which is to say, not goth AT ALL). One was wearing a red velvet crown; another wearing a solid black miniature top hat to mimic the Mad Hatter’s, trimmed with black lace and black fake raven feathers. The group was talking rather enthusiastically about the film…well, mainly about how hot Johnny Depp was. Folks, I do believe we’ve identified the movie’s target audience.

Watch this movie as a way to kill some time and ogle some interesting graphics. And the movie did have its funny moments when it wasn’t on the verge of slitting its own wrists. I’d say, watch this one at home with a group of friends and some good food, and don’t hold back on the MST3K commentary. You’ll likely get much more out of it than you would in the theatre.

Tune in next time, when I’ll probably ruin someone else’s childhood!

P.S. Spwug’s own Donnie Sturges recommended this hi-larious link to me, and I think it’s a fine way to end this post. From College Humor: Tim Burton’s Secret Formula.

Well, guys, it’s been a busy week, and we’re only three days into it! I could ramble on and on about the state of the Geek Nation (we’re not quite as snazzily-dressed as the Colbert Nation), but Battlefield: Bad Company 2 has dropped today, the next installment in EA’s comedy-action-FPS series. The last time I ever see my housemate will be when he walks in the door with game in hand, as he will be glued to the PS3 for the foreseeable future. So pardon me if I’m keen to rush out of here and say my final farewells. In the spirit of rushin’ (but not Russians–that’ll be left up to Bad Company 2), have a few little news clippy-dippies of what’s been on my mind the past week:

Item the first – The new Borderlands downloadable content, “The Secret Armory of General Knoxx.” So far, this is shaping up to be the best DLC yet! Fantastic new enemies, weapons, and vehicles, and the new maps are appropriately huge. It also takes the punny, crude humour of the game and boots it up a few notches, particularly in the form of grafitti. I’d share screenshots, but most of the jokes thus far are not suitable for Spwuggy content. The “politest” one I’ve seen is a poster depicting one of the game’s despised Crimson Lance bullies soldiers. Over the soldier is the word “VACANCY” with arrows pointing at the soldier’s head and, uh, crotch. Only a handful of the add-on’s quests have been completed so far in this household, but I’ve already lost track of the laugh-out-loud moments–there’s just too much with the funny! By the way, in this DLC, you will learn a bit more about redneck Scooter and the sexy Mad Moxxi than you probably wanted to know. And it’s not what you’re thinking. Check out the launch trailer for the add-on; although it’s not humourous like I’d expect a Borderlands to be, take a good look at the wanted posters of the four main characters about twenty seconds in. Particularly, look at the female character’s picture for a good chuckle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFWMnKeoDdg

Item the second – The new Nintendo DSi XL will be out very soon! I’ve been looking forward to this new system, with its larger screen and a few other keen features you can read about all over the Web. It’s also looking like the homebrew community will be very happy with this DS, since hack videos are already popping up on YouTube. I’m disappointed that the only launch colours are wine and bronze (I suppose appealing to the target older demographic), but that’s what skins are for. I’ll have my teal Hylian DS yet, even if I have to skin it myself!

Item the third: There is no item the third. I just wanted to see if you all were paying attention.

And that’ll do it for me for another week. It’s time for me to boot up the PS3 and get my kill on!

Did you ever feel it’s time to ramp up the intellectual content of this writer’s articles?

Yeah, me neither.

But there’s no denying that sometimes, sometimes, when you’re not otherwise paying attention, something involving thinky-meats will come up and smack you over the head, and you’ll say, “This is COOL!” Then you’ll look around quickly, afraid your middle-school science teacher is gloating somewhere nearby.

I’m pretty sure Mr. Jasper* is nowhere around, so I think it’s safe to share this article with you, if I hurry.

An archelogical dig in Turkey has recently turned up the oldest-known human-made structures–predating even the Great Pyramid by about 7,000 years.

This find appears to be raising new questions more quickly than it answers existing ones. Guesses can and are being made at the structures’ purpose, but so many ideas are being tossed back and forth, I couldn’t do that article justice here without just pasting the whole darn thing. And since I didn’t WRITE the whole darn thing, I won’t paste the whole darn thing. Instead, follow the link above to read the whole darn thing, and sit back as your perception of human history rewrites itself!

I’m almost as excited at this amazing find as I am about Christmas, birthdays, and the upcoming Zelda game. There’s no hope for me to ever become a normal person, is there?

*Middle-school science teacher identity invented to protect the guilty….Namely, me. I probably shouldn’t have slept through those archeology documentaries in class….**

**Oh, who am I kidding? I was such a science geek I was practically drooling during those things!

Did you miss webcomic reviews after the untimely death of my last computer? So did I! Luckily, I’ve been workin’ hard on getting new review notes compiled since then, and I now have some fruits of my labours. So let’s jump right in on this Review After the Fact….

Maybe you’re a gamer, but you find most gaming comics too vulgar or violent or absurd. I don’t share this problem, but I’m sure someone has it out there. So, if you’re looking for a less R-rated gaming comic, would you be interested in reading the archives of one that manages to be family-friendly while not dumbing down the content in the slightest? Then keep reading!

As many of you already know, CrispyGamer.com recently decided to shoot itself in both feet, then the head for good measure (or overkill; I’m not sure where the brains of that operation actually were located when all this was going on). Staff canned, CEO gone, and, most importantly to this article, comics unceremoniously terminated. One of those was Aaron Williams’ Backward Compatible.

I’m a huge fan of his work. You might be familiar with some of his other online-offering titles, such as Nodwick, Full Frontal Nerdity, and PS238. He also wrote for the acclaimed comic North 40, published by Wildstorm, and is also working with Marvel on an undisclosed project. This guy is a true professional artist in every sense of the words (and a real dang friendly dude!), and it shows in his work. The art in his comics is sharp and clean, and the lettering makes it clear that at least one person out there who publishes online stayed awake in English class.

Backward Compatible focused on the daily work lives of a small group of fictitious Crispy Gamer staff, based on actual people. The focus wasn’t on an ongoing story or characterization (which makes my job here much easier); it was all about episodic, topical gaming humour. That’s the meat of it, and it was tasty meat indeed. Take a look at a few prime examples of what made Backward Compatible so entertaining. Guys, I kid you not, I had over a dozen favourite strips saved to potentially post here for this review. Every single one was so funny, I couldn’t choose. I took the geek way out and rolled a die to determine the winners. The rest will be posted at the end of this page as links. I just couldn’t leave them out!

We all had these same thoughts about Fallout 3 (click to enlarge):

Let’s make fun of the Syphilis–I mean Syfy–Channel’s bad decisions–that NEVER gets old! No, I’m not being sarcastic there. Why, oh WHY do we have crap like Man-Thing airing as original Syfy programming, but The Lost Room is STILL in freakin’ limbo?! Here’s a novel idea, Syfy: if you want us to stop mocking you, STOP BEING STUPID. (Whew. Think I may have eaten a tangent for breakfast. No more citrus for me!)

A requisite World of Warcraft comic? Don’t mind if I do!

If this existed, I would play the heck out of it:

Are you keen to read more yet? Then hop on over to the very first strip and start reading! Backward Compatible only ran from January 2008 to January 2010, so you can expect to get through the entire archives in several hours or less. Not a bad way to spend an evening at home, eh? The current fate of the comic is unknown, but it’s likely that the archives will eventually be removed from CrispyGamer.com, so don’t wait! Act now to read the sheer comic genius that is Backward Compatible before time runs out! And if you need a little more convincing, here are the other comics that didn’t make it into this review:

Even the Pope was not amused by the “pre-downloading” concept of Left 4 Dead 2.

The second panel of this one says pretty much everything I’ve ever thought about those ridiculous Mac-which-is-actually-still-a-PC vs. PC ads.

What it would actually look like if illegal hunting was influenced by video games. Epic LULZ abound!

More Syfy mockery! That stuff is always in style.

Yeah, I could see why some people wouldn’t want to play a Zork MMO.

Why Gordon Freeman never speaks. (Where is our Half Life Episode 3, anyways?)

The…interesting…weaponry of Left 4 Dead 2.

You just keep telling yourself that, Mac. I own over a half-dozen Nintendo consoles, but no Apple products.

Snark Trek.

See now why I had so much trouble choosing? Go read more for yourself! Don’t worry. Unlike Crispy Gamer and Backward Compatible itself, I’ll still be here next week when you’re done.

So I hear there was a sacred ritual in America this weekend. Supposedly it consisted of humans gathering in big groups with large amounts of fried food and chips, watching sweaty, muscled meatsacks ripping the flesh from a large hog, then tossing the resulting oblong wad back and forth. It is supposed to confirm masculinity, and geeks like me (particularly rather NON-masculine geeks like me) are generally not welcome at such events. Somehow, though, I found myself attending one this past Sunday, partly to satisfy my morbid curiosity.

You’d think, having lived here all my life, that I’d be more familiar with this religious ceremony. Instead, I spent the evening staring at the proceedings with a kind of horrified fascination.

I’d been invited by friends. These are people I see on a fairly regular basis. We’ve known one another for years. I know their hobbies, their likes, dislikes, their dreams, their fears…but I did not recognize the people I sat with during this game of feet and balls as the friends I’ve known so long and well.

“We’re having the party more to watch the commercials than the game. Most of us aren’t big football fans,” they said. So I attended expecting food, camaraderie, and boisterous conversation. What I got?

Oh, there was food. Plates piled high with offerings to the gods of feet and balls–chips, barbeque wieners, pretzels, sodas. But the camaraderie and boisterous conversation? I began to worry I’d stepped into a cult gathering. There was no punch bowl, luckily. When the “game” started, my lively, entertaining friends became fixated on the TV, jaws hanging open, possibly with little streams of drool running out. I don’t know. I kept my distance. When they spoke, it was to yell obscenities at the screen. Anyone making a comment unrelated to the happenings on the television was largely ignored.

I avoided looking at the screen which had turned my friends into grunting shells of humans. Something wasn’t right here.

Then the twisted ritual of men dogpiling onto each other and patting each other on the buttocks (”But we’re not gay, no, even though we grope each other and shower together and sleep together and live together on the road, why won’t you BELIEVE us?!”) was interrupted by advertisements for OTHER arcane, evil rituals. That was when things got really scary.

As soon as the ads started, my once-friendly comrades started angrily shushing the few brave souls who’d tried to engage in the “boisterous conversation” I’d come to this party specifically to experience. The vehemence made no sense to me; the DVR was recording the game. If you missed a few seconds, couldn’t you just pause during the brief conversations and then rewind so everyone who wanted to could see? (And they did rewind for particularly amusing ads people wanted to see again. Frequently.) I had been pretty quiet since the game began, unsettled by the rapt attention my pals were giving the talky box and not to one another. I made a silent note not to speak for the rest of the evening, fearing for my safety.

And what was happening on the screen wasn’t holding my attention at all. Even the famous “Super Bowl ads” were more annoying than entertaining–and what was up with the steady theme of emasculation in them this year, anyways? Maybe I was immune to the spell that hypnotized the rest of the room. I wasn’t going to give it a chance to seize me, either. About forty-five minutes into the satanic ritual, I quietly snuck my roomie’s PSP out of my bag, found a mercifully open outlet for the adapter, and began to play the Second Quest of The Legend of Zelda. (If the PSP serves any use beyond playing old Nintendo-console games, I haven’t found it.)

The ceremony continued. The angry comments at the screen continued. The impolite shushing of conversation for Commercial Time continued. After an hour or two, someone remarked that I must be bored because I wasn’t watching the game. I froze, taking a hit from an Ironknuckle in the process. Caught! I wondered if I would leave this place whole, or even alive. I quickly mumbled some lie about pausing the game to watch the ads, and this seemed to satisfy the others. Or maybe they were so deep under the TV’s spell that they couldn’t bear to look away for long. Either way, they left me alone then. I gave a discreet sigh and continued playing, only mildly annoyed that I now had to go looking for Hearts to get my sword-laser back.

And so it went. When my friends weren’t shouting vulgarities at the screen, they were hissing venom at each other for commercials. I finished one dungeon, then a second, and began looking for the White Sword and the Blue Ring.

Then several people behind the couch began having a conversation during the game. Was the spell breaking? One of them asked me a question while the others kept talking. Cautiously, I started to answer–unfortunately, just as commercials started. “SHHHHHHHHH! Shut up! Commercials!” someone at the far end of the room hissed rather pissily. I wasn’t sure if they were talking to the others, who were sitting right next to him, or to me across the room.

But I was getting pretty angry myself. I had had enough of this satanic event turning my friends into angry d-bags, when I’d come for a party. And if they were talking to me, who was that, to tell a supposed friend to shut up when they’re trying to be polite and answer a question? I shot an obscene phrase at him under my breath just in case he was addressing me, something I won’t repeat here, but which rhymed with “Ducking dock writer.” Luckily for my life and limb, everyone else had been enraptured by the TV again and didn’t hear. I muttered angrily, and started to go back to my much more important NES game–only to realize that I had just been as ferocious as everyone around me. Cold fear stabbed through me. Was the TV’s spell reaching out to me as well now?

There was only one way to resist–I buried myself in the magical Land of Hyrule and didn’t look up for the rest of the evening. By the time I had finished the third dungeon and acquired several hidden items in the Overworld, the evil game on TV was over, and I was safe. I cheered along with the others, but for different reasons.

And now the spell was broken. My friends were acting like friends again!–for the five minutes it took them to gather their coats and leftover food and exit out the door. Ah, well. At least they were all safe and whole again, and perhaps more amazingly, *I* was safe and whole.

I was happy. I said my goodnights and goodbyes and hurried out to the car. Once inside, I realized I had finally, truly escaped the wicked spell of the Super Bowl…until next year, that is. I would have to prepare intensely between now and then in order to better resist Super Bowl 2011’s occult charms.

I don’t know if I’ll be strong enough. 2011 may be the end of me.

At least I finished three dungeons in Zelda.

(P.S. This was a work of humourous fiction. The party and people in this post should not be mistaken for the party and people that I actually rocked out at/with. But writing an epic tale of struggle and betrayal and redemption is far more interesting than writing “I went to a Bowl party, it was fun, Betty White is hardcore, we ate too much, I played Zelda, and then we all went home!”)

It’s that time again, and I bring good news! I’ll get back to the appointed task of webcomic reviews soon. No, I still don’t have the notes for future articles which are sitting on my deceased computer. But I have been assembling NEW notes during the past month and reading new(-to-me) webcomics. I’m happy to say I’m tearing through Aaron Williams’ stellar but recently-halted Backward Compatible (it’s hosted on the sinking ship CrispyGamer.com, so its future is uncertain). I’m also a year and a half’s worth of archives away from having caught up on Ryan Sohmer’s and Lar DeSouza’s Least I Could Do.

So, yeah. Webcomic reviews later. Video game downloadable content reviews now!

Rants about imperfect video games are nothing new to me. Nowadays, in this era of patches, you’re not buying a complete game anymore when you shell out your $65 or so at the cash register. You’re buying the IDEA of a complete game, the POTENTIAL that all the glitches, bugs, and other oversights will someday be fixed by the development team and render the game as playable as it should have been the moment you bought the disc or download.

Sadly, this is all too often not the case. There are far too many instances where developers seem to think, “Well, we’ve made enough money on that title now; we don’t have to fix it anymore. Let’s start on the sequel!”….Which definitely pushes my rage buttons that gamers are doling out big bucks for flawed products. Let’s take a look at a specific title, the incredibly fun, but irritatingly flawed Borderlands.

The game overall is a work of genius. Fun weapons and shields, and there are ways to modify them and make them even more fun. Unique enemies (ever want to shoot psychopathic axe-wielding midgets? Well, now you can!) Humourous dialogue and so many geek references (everything from Bruce Campbell to Joss Whedon’s Firefly) that you know the makers don’t see a lot of sunlight, and you’re extremely grateful for this. Games that are heavy on the FPS aspects don’t usually catch my attention, but I’ve spent far too many hours seeing this game in action that I should have spent working!

Vanilla Borderlands actually runs as it should–most of the time. The downloadable content, however, is another story, and one that continues to light up fan forums.

“The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned”

Nice mustache! I didn’t know you could grow them OUTSIDE the surgical mask like that. Unlike his twin brother(?) Dr. Zed, Dr. Ned is definitely a man of mystery….

I love zombies. Do you love zombies? I also love shooting them in funny settings, where you’re given quests with names like “Brains” and its follow-up quests “Braaains”, “Braaaaains”, “Braaaaaaaaaaaains”, and “Braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaains” (can you guess what you’re collecting?) I also love parody quests like “Here We Go Again” in which you discover the planet Pandora’s versions of Scooby-Doo’s Shaggy and Scooby…Harry and Skaggy–Skags being the vicious alien dogs of Pandora with rather suggestively-shaped maws. Zoiks!

What I DON’T love are glitches, particularly glitches that never get fixed. If I buy your DLC, developers, I expect it to WORK, and if it doesn’t, you’re supposed to make good on it!

In this Zombie Island DLC, you find and repair a vending machine belonging to the weapons manufacturer Jakobs, where presumably you stand a good chance of buying hard-to-get weapons. Fans cheered this move–a unique vending machine that could help you score some of those rare and powerful weapons we’ve all heard so much about! This was much-needed because most items and their stats are randomly generated. You’re never guaranteed to find a butt-kickin’ gun in normal gameplay, so having a high-end weapons vendor that you can visit any time was a big relief.

….Except that the Jakobs machine stops working if you “turn in” the repair mission for your reward or leave the area for any reason. Once you turn in the quest or return to the machine from another area, it’s once again defunct, and you’re left with those crappy weak guns the enemies always seem to want to drop when they die. The Zombie Island DLC has been out since fall 2009. It’s now winter 2010. WHERE’S OUR BUGFIX, GEARBOX SOFTWARE?! We paid for a fully-functional add-on, not one that’s hobbled in one of its major selling points!

“Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot”

So many people bottle up their emotions, it’s nice to see someone who wears her heart on her…uhhhh…never mind.

This one seems like more of an extremely stupid oversight than an outright glitch. In the Mad Moxxi DLC, you fight arena matches against enemies and bosses from the game. There are different levels of challenges, and the greater challenges are twenty rounds long. This doesn’t seem so bad, until you realize that there five “waves” per round in which you battle multiple enemies during each wave, and a different boss every fifth wave.

How long does it take to complete twenty rounds, totaling one hundred waves? If you weren’t lucky enough to find very powerful weapons and shields during normal gameplay, you can realistically spend your entire day in the arena. My housemate took six and a half hours to get from round one to round ten, only halfway done. And this wouldn’t be that bad–a nice long challenge would be FUN, if you could put it down and pick it back up whenever you wanted.

….Except, the developers didn’t include any way to save your game during or between rounds. If your system crashes and needs a restart, or you decide to quit and come back, you have to start all over again. At round one of twenty. Apparently, Gearbox didn’t realize that most people have to work for a living and don’t have unlimited amounts of time to spend trying to complete arena challenges. And let me tell you, those challenges get really, really old after a few hours, knowing you can’t quit without losing all your progress. And here I thought games were supposed to be FUN! Silly me.

So, how about it, game developers? Here’s a little tip from the gamers of the world: we don’t want to pay for faulty, rushed products. We’d rather wait for a thoroughly playtested and bugfixed product that works from the get-go. If you’re going to take our money, at least make sure we get what we paid for.

Thank you, and good night.

By now, you may be sick of hearing about Haiti. If that’s the case, you’re pretty darn lucky right now to be well off enough that disasters don’t affect you. Haiti’s a good cause, if you’re of the donating mind. There are many good links and resources being widely advertised, and that’s why this article is not about Haiti, but about the equally-important yet lesser-known cause of putting a stop to human trafficking and slavery.

Yeah, I thought we were living in the 21st century too. Apparently some people didn’t get the memo. Here’s the situation, as written on the site I’m about to link you to:

There are currently 27 million enslaved people worldwide- more than double the number of enslaved Africans during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. UNICEF estimates that 1.2 million children every year are sold into slavery, most of it sexual. The US Department of Justice estimates 16,000 victims of human trafficking are brought into the United States every year.

A lot of wonderful webcomics have banded together and formed the Comic Creator’s Alliance. The recent donation drive they held ended January 24th, but the organizations they were trying to benefit can still be reached (and donated to) from the main page of the Alliance’s site!

There’s really not a whole lot I can say about this. Not a whole lot to BE said, really. Slavery is a Very Bad Thing which must be stopped. End of story.

I just want to give the participants their well-deserved kudos. And if you want to see who took part in the Comic Creator’s Alliance this year, drop by the listing! (And maybe drop by their webpages and give them some love on your way back from donating some coin to save humanity.) These people are fighting the good fight, doing what must be done, and all those other clichés that boil down to just being awesome people.

The more you know, amIright?

Ah, fandom. It’s always fun to write on a touchy subject. No matter what I say about a topic as popular as Zelda, someone’s gonna get their jerkin in a twist. So I’ll just be upfront with my opinions (which are not at all the same thing as facts) and say this:

I think the only studio that could produce a good Zelda movie is The Jim Henson Company.

Peter Jackson who? Spielberg jiggawha?

OOOOOOoooooOOOOooohh, snap. Did I open a can of worms there? Let me present my essay which argues my point. I call it “Why Zelda Is Awesome and Why Jim Henson Is Awesome and Why They Should Work Together Like My Teacher Says We’re Supposed To.” I got an A+ and a gold star for it!

When I first wrote it. Just now. Look, I’ve gotta use all these star stickers for SOMETHING….

By sheer coincidence, the works of the late-and-great Jim Henson have been popping up almost daily in my life the past few weeks. It started with the release of Labyrinth on Blu-Ray, followed by the BluR release of The Dark Crystal, further followed by finding an uncut version of A Muppet Family Christmas online, and finally followed by discovering the original seasons of The Muppet Show on Netflix. I’ve been put back in touch with my childhood in ways I haven’t experienced in years, and I’m lovin’ (the heck out of) it! (Suck it, McD’s.)

However, it was The Dark Crystal–a beautiful, somber, mature, yet amusing movie–that really set my mental wheels in motion. Until this year, I’d never seen it all at once, or even all the way through. And, as I watched the elflike Gelflings, the divided sacred object that needed to be reunited, and the fantastic monsters that managed to be both intimidating and caricaturish at the same time, certain thoughts kept bouncing through my head: “I’m watching a Zelda movie. I’m watching THE Zelda movie. Miyamoto surely viewed this right before he pitched The Legend of Zelda to Nintendo.”

Now, I know I’m hardly the only one to point out similarities between these two beautiful works. And if you really wanna get technical, everything that happens in 1982’s The Dark Crystal and 1986’s The Legend of Zelda has already been done in many fantastic stories over the years. But these two entities, taken as two wholes and placed side by side, make two quite complementary packages. I just can’t imagine a Zelda movie being done better by anyone other than The Jim Henson Company.

Oh, sure, for years I’ve heard statements from giggling fangirls like, “Orlando Bloom needs to play Link in a Zelda movie because he was Legolas!” And…NO. Just, seriously, NO. Not only does Bloom look far too old to play a teenage Hylian (and I’d say he doesn’t look like Link at all, regardless of age), wearing elf ears and a blonde wig doesn’t make you the iconic Legendary Hero of Hyrule any more than a crown and scepter make you the Queen of England. We’re talking about a much-loved video game series that’s been around for over twenty years, and a hero that still makes us cheer and/or swoon in his various (re)incarnations. Link was my first idol when I was twelve in 1992, and at the tender age of thirty, I’m still no less enamoured of the Legendary Hero’s epic quests. And I’m just ONE diehard fan.

Yeah, to cast for live-action roles of characters like Link, Zelda, and even Ganon is a thankless task, almost certainly doomed to failure. Have you ever seen a fan-produced, live-action Zelda video? If yes, then you probably know the sense of disappointment that the cast didn’t fit your personal image of what the Zelda characters should look and sound like, and you probably felt that rush of relief that it was only a fan production and not an official film. I know I felt all that most recently in 2009, when that awful fan-movie The Hero of Time came out, featuring lousy acting and costumes that I’ve seen topped by first-year cosplayers. And yes, I had a huge sigh of relief when Nintendo put the smack down on the movie’s makers.

(I’d like to deviate here, and say I had no interest in ever watching it after seeing the bad, bad, BAD trailer. However, I wouldn’t have had a problem with the fan-film, and I would have even supported fans showing their love in such a way….Except, the makers stated it was “not for profit” and then proceeded to sell tickets to screening events, while planning to sell DVD’s and other merchandise. They said it was “to recoup expenses.” But the thing about “not for profit” is that you DON’T try to recoup expenses. You make a product with the resources you have, and then you make that product available without ever seeing a dime go to you, for ANY reason. And you’d better make doubly sure you’re doing that if you’re not even using your own intellectual property to start with. Yeah, with little legal breaches like that, I’m not surprised Nintendo shut them down.)

Thing is, I don’t see a live-action Zelda movie ever really working on a wide scale, largely for the above reason that people generally aren’t going to be satisfied with whoever is cast. At least with animation or puppetry/Muppetry, the characters still retain an abstract quality–you SEE them on the screen, yes, but the fine physical details of how they should look are still left to your imagination. It’s harder to let your imagination speak when Orlando Bloom’s or whoever’s every wrinkle and freckle is staring you in the face. Animated characters and puppets have the double advantage of being viewable, but not forcing one set visage into your mind–only the most detailed CG characters currently seem to run that risk. All in all, when live-action actors aren’t involved, you’re likely to be more lenient on the character designs (while mainly harping on about the voice actors, I’d imagine).

Another problem I have with a live-action film in relation to Zelda is that such a movie is highly likely to take itself too seriously. A LOT of fans have said that a Zelda movie should be done by Peter Jackson, using the same settings, special effects, and style of writing as was found in the Lord of the Rings movies. I agree that a Peter Jackson Zelda movie done like that would be very pretty, but it wouldn’t really feel like a Zelda movie. Think about it. The characters, enemies, and even locations and items in the Zelda games tend to have a cartoonish look that extends across every game from the original to Twilight Princess and beyond. When you play a Zelda game, you get the feeling that it’s never really taking itself entirely seriously (after all, Shigeru Miyamoto didn’t want his games to ever stop feeling fun). The Lord of the Rings movies, on the other hand, give the impression that they’re taking themselves VERY seriously, even when something funny happens. I totally understand why; it’s freakin’ Tolkien. If you don’t honour his works with the proper degree of respect and solemnity, the fans will have your head in chunks.

But making Zelda a “Hobbit Lite” movie just wouldn’t work. You need character designs and actions that don’t take anything too seriously. You need everything in the movie to be a kind of caricature of itself. You need to give the impression that, no matter how dark things become when Ganon conquers Hyrule or X-character meets a tragic end, the audience as a whole still feels a childlike wonder that takes us back to our first Zelda game. We need to feel we’re IN Hyrule, and the way to do that is by staying true to the vibrant visual nature of the fantasy land we’ve all come to know so well for the past two decades.

That’s where The Jim Henson Company steps in, with their imaginative designs, bright colours, boisterous acting, and puppets that move in ways which are truer to human nature than most humans are usually comfortable displaying. For example, you’ve seen dancing in Zelda games? Ever think how ridiculous some of those moves would look in live-action? But if performed by Muppets, those same moves would look natural and entertaining. Monsters roaring, animals skittering, Hylian heroes dodging fireballs–all those movements in the games, even the motion-captured ones, are done with a subtle exaggeration (oxymoron, much?) that would look strange or over-acted in live-action, but would seem perfectly normal with Muppets.

Time to put up or shut up, right? Well, okay, then, I’ll do both (mostly). I’ll let the following pictures speak their thousand words apiece. Look at some of the official art from the original The Legend of Zelda.

Now go look at some screenshots from The Dark Crystal over at Blu-Ray.com (then come back here for an interesting little video). If you didn’t know what you were seeing, and someone told you they were screengrabs from a Zelda movie, would you (Gelfling faces aside) really find it all that difficult to believe?

And if you want to see where Miyamoto seems to have gotten the idea for Peahats (pure speculation on my part, but Miyamoto loves to include things from his fandoms in his games), watch this segment from The Dark Crystal. Skip ahead to 1:37 to see what I mean.

Thus concludes my A+ gold-star essay. Now I have to go, so I’ll just see ya next time….Miss Trunchbull sez I got after-school detention. Again. Who knew it was against the rules to put cherry bombs in the toilets? No one ever tells me anything. :/

(Zelda, “Reading Rainbow”, AND Matilda? Yeah, no further need to prove I was an 80s kid, is there….)

It’s that time again! And seeing as all my previous notes for Spwug articles, webcomic reviews, and other whatnot are still inaccessible to me (and no, we can’t just transfer them to this computer right now, for reasons), you get a new batch this week…of filler!

Entirely by coincidence, I’ve seen more of Adam Baldwin in one weekend than I’ve seen over the past year, via Firefly and the season premiere of Chuck. I’ma gonna ramble about the first of those two shows—yes, I really did go this long without seeing Firefly and its movie, Serenity. This article is really an Opinion After the Fact and not much of a review at all, since there’s probably no need for me to go into character descriptions and plot for a show that you’ve likely already seen, or at least heard about, and you’ve probably already made up your mind on its merits.

What was my verdict, after watching the Joss Whedon work that was repeatedly urinated upon by FOX (c’mon, is anyone REALLY surprised that a network now hiring Sarah Palin screwed up?), resurrected by the fans, then killed again? Well, I had a blast watching it. I can see why it’s so loved. The character dialogue and interactions were brilliant for the most part. When you watch the show, you stick around because the scenes are so wonderfully written. Great jokes, deep insights, usually realistic reactions to dangerous situations…the characters really are people and not just characters, and that’s what make the show truly live. My better half and I did spend the series playing the “Hey! I saw that part in Cowboy Bebop/Outlaw Star” game, although of course it could be said that those two shows in turn lifted some of their own moments from previous works, and so on down the line. (The “game” is not a complaint, by the way. It was fun.)

At the same time, though, I can see why it got cancelled (twice). What didn’t I like?

There were times when people behaved slightly against their grain so as to not to move the plot along too quickly, which would occasionally bring things into cliché territory. This usually happened via Malcolm Reynolds not living up to the “shoot first” attitude that made him such an interesting character in the first episodes.* Naturally, the Bad Guy that Mal didn’t kill would then come back to haunt the ship’s crew, only to end up getting killed by Mal after all, roll credits. Not terribly original. Meanwhile, this being a Joss Whedon creation, you of course had the required “main character dies a stupid death for absolutely no good reason” in Serenity. (HARPOON!) Maybe it would have made more sense and had more impact if we’d had seasons and seasons of episodes and character development leading up to it, instead of a single random act?

* Some of the villains Mal “killed” were supposed to come back later in the series. But since the series HAD no “later”, this little point becomes moot.

In other issues I had, the worlds visited were all largely identical, being mostly either barren dustballs or barren ice worlds due to lack of budget—on the flip side, the inside of the ship Serenity was so detailed that it really was, as a DVD extra calls it, the tenth character. Then there’s River Tam, the very annoying know-it-all character whose mental imbalance shouldn’t be an excuse for her behaviour–and really, The Mysterious Girl Is Always the Key to Everything has already been done in nearly every sci-fi creation known to man. And of course, the “united government that rules everything on all worlds is evil and corrupt” recurring theme is another standard sci-fi cliché. It didn’t seem to fit in so well with the episodic unrelated criminal capers the main cast got up to regularly.

And I think that was the show’s Achilles heel. All the brilliant dialogue in the world can’t save you from a story that’s been done many times before and doesn’t give any indication of being done in a unique manner this time. I really believe that, if the show had lasted, it would have been a FUN ride and more than worth the price of admission. But at the end, it likely wouldn’t have been the space dramedy roller coaster to end all space dramedy roller coasters. The show deservedly has a lot of rabid fans. But I also think that intense love for many is bolstered by the “absence makes the heart grow fonder” sentiment as only the word “CANCELLED” can bring.

I still think anyone who likes a good sci-fi show should watch Firefly, because it was very good. Yeah, I just wrote a list of complaints up there, but for the most part, they’re pretty minor. Besides, that’s what I DO. I warn you what to expect. The show is awesome. But if you haven’t seen it, don’t go in expecting any surprises. Expect fun dialogue, fun Western-style shootouts, fun criminal capers, crossdressing, fancy guns, toy dinosaurs, and, if you’re just the shallow type, eye-candy in the form of naked Mal (according to many fangirls) or the lovely Companions (according to many fanboys)…just don’t call them whores. (The Companions, that is. Although I’m sure Mal would take some offense to the term himself, despite using it on his own Companion comrade/not-so-seekrit love interest regularly.)

Yep, if you’re like me and you never get around to watching something unless everyone you know is still raving about it years later, the Firefly series is an excellent one to add to your Netflix queue. But don’t take my (many) words for it. How about some YouTube examples of the previously-mentioned great spoken lines?

A Powerful Ugly Creature – posted by gouhibiki

“Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!” – posted by foxabulous

“What’d y’all order a dead guy for?” – posted by gouhibiki

Join us next time, when I’ll probably have yet another random article whilst waiting for the new computer’s parts to arrive!

Happy New Year to all you Spwuggerifics out there!

I know all (none) of you out there who are(n’t) reading this are(n’t) saying, “What kind of way is this to kick off the new year? We were waiting for your article since last night!”

Well, kids, I only just rolled in home from a trip that I should have been back from Sunday night,* and I’m exhausted, hungry, and have a lot of laundry to do. But I owe you all a Spwug article, and a Spwug article you shall have.

*Never tell your family or car you have to be back home by a certain date. They’ll take it as a challenge.

Some people do the resolution thing for New Year’s. I don’t, figuring that if it’s so important you have to promise yourself you’ll do it, then it’s worth starting as soon as you think of it instead of waiting for a day on a calendar. So what I offer you here is more of a mission statement, or a preview of what you can see here in 2010. I think I’m finally getting the hang of this webcomic writin’ thang, so you can expect to see more streamlined (hah!) reviews. You can expect to see better utilization of graphics (and me spending a whole lot more time in Paint Shop Pro to make them better fit WordPress’ incredibly odd formatting).

Additionally, you’ll see a different kind of article showing up. So far I’ve only talked about the webcomics that I’ve been reading for a good while because I like them and know their content pretty well. Since starting my illustrious Spwug career, I’ve started going through the “to be read” links in my bookmarks. And, well, I’ve added some new comics to my regular reading list, but I’ve also run across a few comics that make me want those wasted hours of my life back. So, yes, friends, you can expect negative reviews to start showing up here. I’ve already got three ripe candidates in mind, two of which surprised me by actually being very popular comics on the Internet.

And that’s about it from me for now. I’ve got a hot sweet bun and a warm bed begging to be utilized. May your New Year be as stocked with full bellies and sweet dreams as mine is about to be!