The Joker's come a long way since his Filmation days...
Can I just start off this entry with the most awesome thing ever (thus far)? Here it is: Mark Hamill, in the voice of the Joker, saying Heath Ledger's most famous line from "The Dark Knight." I also saw a graphic go by when looking for an appropriate image that noted how the choice for the ultimate Joker voice might have been destiny. I never really looked at the name MARK HAMILL quite that way, before...
That awesomeness almost outweighs the worrisome aspects of the trailer for "Justice League: Doom." First, where's Lex Luthor being voiced by Clancy Brown? Secondly, the plot is basically the one from the JLA comic story, Tower of Babel, re-tooled and with different bad guys. I'm wondering if Bob from Marketing had a limited list of characters that were allowed, ones that someone higher up wanted to be in it, or what? I'll still play along for some of the performers involved, but it's looking like there's a story behind how it was put together that will be interesting to see.
A while back it was announced that a TV adaptation for Lev Grossman's "The Magicians" would appearing on Fox as an hour-long series. Fox being what it is, I structured that sentence to leave the door open for jokes about whether each episode would be an hour long or the entire run before cancellation would comprise an hour. I just read the first novel in the series, and I figure it's got a shot on Fox as a long-running series. Don't misunderstand, I thought it was an interesting read, especially if one takes it as a "what would an upper-level school for magicians be like in a more realistic universe than that of Harry Potter" along with a "what sort of human beings would this school produce" tale. It tries to answer a few of the questions the Potterverse left open, though a few of these are just simple rules the author states without debate: Magic messes up electronics, trying to perform magical plastic surgery on yourself never goes well, etc. But what Fox has kept on the air in the past has been dramas about young people who sleep around a lot and who have loads of privilege and/or few limits. "The Magicians" has this in spades, so the real question is how much the original plot will figure into the show, since that actually goes somewhere vs. a network's desire to keep a "Harry Potter and the Sexy Co-ed" program firmly stuck in a slow-moving story to maximize the cast's fleshy bits rather than some of the magical concepts. It also reads like a TV drama in that it's very hard to sympathize with a lot of the cast. Most are severely flawed, if not downright sociopaths, finding reasons to be miserable and to self-sabotage even though they're getting the keys to the universe, pretty much. There are heroics that happen, but at a very high cost. If Fox takes the plot of the first novel, complete with ending, it's going to be a pretty big downer. Though that might not be bad; a great many critics said "Titanic" did as well as it did partly due to the fact that many young people in the audience had never seen a major motion picture where the romantic love interest didn't make it. It's an interesting confluence of test audience data and the endurance of "Romeo & Juliet," perhaps. If they do follow the first book for the first (or possibly into the second) season, it becomes pretty much a send-up of C.S. Lewis' Narnia series, which would be interesting, though I imagine quite expensive when compared to the previous episodes.
Happily, I can now go read Terry Pratchett's "Snuff" as a chaser.
In the wake of Fox deciding the fate of "The Simpsons," there's noise that they might be considering a cable channel that broadcasts nothing but the adventures of the yellow-hued family. If they stopped making episodes right now, assuming every episode is about 22 minutes and was rounded out to 30 with commercials, there'd be about seven and a half days worth of programming. In this day and age of the DVD set or digital media players, such a "devoted" channel seems like a kind of odd idea, unless we're going to start getting channels to go along with more premium content, as if they were toys in a box of cereal. There's also a phenomenon that I'm sure someone has put a name to where you're more likely to watch a movie/show you already own on disc somewhere if you happen upon it rather than calling it up or popping it into a player. Fox could also showcase stuff that would normally be DVD extras, perhaps some of those live readings the cast did across the country. But I warn fans of this concept: Much like those of us who started out loving the Sci-Fi Channel and Cartoon Network, you could start out with a really nice place to park your remote and wind up wondering why it's all suddenly turned into pro wrasslin' and infomercials.
How many of you out there remember "Micronauts?" JJ Abrams does, as he's directing a future movie based on the old toy line. Those who came to the franchise later might remember the fairly heavy (body banks, anyone?) Marvel Comics series based on the things, as well as the crossovers with the X-Men, of all people. These were toys from the era before every line either came from a movie or had an entire mythology ready to go the second you opened the box. They printed some kinds of back stories on the boxes, but I never met anyone who paid attention to them. The great thing was that these were like a combination of Star Wars toys and Lego: You could take them apart and re-arrange them into whatever your twisted little mind could concoct, often using motorized parts. I'm not quite sure how a movie would work out, though I wouldn't put some kind of "Fantastic Voyage" story coupled with nanomachines past the writers, or maybe it'll be "Transformers with shrink rays." So long as a new set of modular toys I can play with my kid can enjoy, they can do whatever they want... as long as they bring back the Battle Cruiser. I loved that thing, especially because it reminded me of the "Fiery Phoenix" from what my TV network called "G-Force" (that's "Gatchaman" to purists). And no, I have no idea what the deal was with the "Time Traveler" action figure; that just seemed to be the name he was stuck with.
This next item has been a long time in coming: Journey Quest, a fantasy comedy series by the creators of "The Gamers" (the good one, not the clueless one) and "Dorkness Rising." There's a first season already online (here's the trailer), and a kickstarter has been set up for season 2. I think those who don't care all that much for the coward-wizard portrayed in the form of Rincewind might get a kick out of Perf; he's got some good comic chops. Plus, since this is from some guys who know RPGs, being a coward is probably a good survival trait for wizards, especially for those of us that played the really old-school versions: d4 hit dice, the only permissible weapons are a quarterstaff and darts, and no armor. Even in the fantasy realms, the concept of the Lone Wizard on a quest was still pretty much... fantasy. Anyway, I think many here will dig it and might want to lend a hand in getting season 2 going.
Now I have to go empty out my head. Josh has given me a legendary head cold, one that almost makes one hallucinate if you stand up too fast. Once again I'd like to thank our nation's amateur chemists and reactionary politicians for making stuff with actual decongestants that work unavailable without going back to the pharmacy and showing some ID. Making people unable to buy it by the case is one thing, but a week's worth of cold relief? Bah. Besides, they've moved on to those "bath salts" things now, anyway, and I'm still stopped up like a wine bottle with a broken cork, grump-grump-grump. Josh is SO getting oranges in his stocking this year. :)
With that evil holiday thought in our brains, let's move on to:
- Some keen-eyed prop spotters have noticed that the guns for Terra Nova are probably available at your local Wally World.
- Hasbro is ordering up another BayFormers movie while cutting the budget for the long-awaited "Ouija" movie... because nobody has ever had one of those spirit-board things in movies before.
- Add this antique sheet music typewriter to "old stuff I didn't know existed but now covet."
- From the "sign o' the times" files, it looks like Lowe's hardware is closing 20 stores.
- Artist Larry Armstrong has a great map of the Realm of Every Game. It's frighteningly accurate.
- Mooo Twooo is a game where the goal is to get your cow to the bottle of mutagen at the end of each level. On the way, use said mutagen to turn the cow into a flying pig and a Velcro-like sheep in order to solve puzzles.
- If you haven't built your chomping Pacman costume for Halloween yet, here are your blueprints.
- Passing a semi in Russia starts out normally enough but takes an odd turn as you approach the front. I think the driver is looking for John Connor.
- Warm up any love you might have for retro-pixelated games and try Jelly Jam. You're a jellyfish in a playfield that adheres to "Asteroids" physics (you can exit one side and enter on the other, but objects don't). Gather all the "good" items while avoiding increasingly perilous fish hooks, junk, and monsters.
- I so wanted this to be true when I was in high school.
- Some modder and wizard with Adobe After Effects needs to take this old footage of Las Vegas, circa 1962 and mix it with "Fallout: New Vegas."
- I forget what actress I was searching for a while back, but I discovered that I couldn't find her age anywhere online or on IMDB, even the Pro version. Now I see that among some in Hollywood, having your age leaked is lawsuit-worthy.
- If you've been waiting for a real-life hoverboard, one able to bear a person's weight has been made at the University of Paris. Of course there are some bugs to work out, like not needing the track and super-cooled liquid, etc.
- A father was arrested for making his daughter engage in mock-swordfighting for two hours, after which, she collapsed. Then she cheated by using modern technology to have a friend call 911.
- Finally, a game where your Game Literacy will be put to the test. You don't get too many instructions, but if you've played video games before, the puzzles shouldn't be too hard...