Only the most serious art contains scenes of people being sad in the rain.

Click here to read part one of this essay. Or don’t. See if I care.

When I was a kid, I used to separate people into two categories, showing my affinity for pithy reductionism even at that early age: Lego kids and 3d puzzle kids. Lego kids would build awkward structures out of Lego and populate them with whatever characters they had laying around from a dozen different playsets — spacemen, ninjas, knights… other spacemen. Then they’d play with the things for hours, making laser sounds with their mouths, and finish up by smashing it all to bits, acting as the left hand of the plastic men’s God in some imagined apocalypse. 3d puzzle kids would buy a 3d puzzle of a Star … Read More

I am rarely wrong. That is, I rarely admit that I have been wrong, which is pretty much the same. Was it wrong to purchase a Korean manservant over the Internet? Matter of perspective. Was it wrong to place him in a series of underground MMA fights against his will? No more wrong, I’d argue, than his so-called “job placement organization” lying about his God damn glass jaw. Was it wrong to lie about his weight so he would be pitted against men three times his size, potentially inflating my payout? Ethically, but not morally. Learn the difference, hippies. 

But I’m going to admit that I was wrong now, which is even more out of character, because I’ve never publicly stated the opinion I’m about to contradict. It would be very easy for me to say that I … Read More

I can offer no commentary on this that makes it any funnier. And so, here is a portion of a letter recently recieved by Latino Review concerning the new Benicio Del Toro film, The Wolfman. The letter was written by Kayla Patterson, who is a, ahem, devout Twilight fan:

"This movie was a complete waste and I feel that it offends ALL Twilight Fans around the world, that including myself. For one, it was a COMPLETE remaking of the Wolf Pack from the Twilight Saga: New Moon. It gives the werewolves a bad name and makes them look like some deformed mutation of a rabid dog. I actually started to like werewolves after seeing Jacob Black and all his awesomeness on the big screen at the movies. That was until I saw your crappy remake of what you call to be … Read More

Those keeping up with the Dark Knight's current DC comics adventurizing will get the second level of this awesome t-shirt, but I think anyone can appreciate it based on the sheer strength of its adorableness.

(via Comics Alliance)

 Dear Canada,

Sometimes you're weird and boring. You're almost always too cold. You rarely get any of the movies I want to see in your theatres, and your politics irritate me. But just when I'm thinking I've had enough of you, Canada, you go and do something like this.

Oh, yeah, that link? Totally NSFW.

It leads to a flash game developed and hosted by the Middlesex-London Health Unit (that's London, Ontario), where you play as a ripped dude with -- and none of what follows is a joke -- penises for hands that fire shark-faced sperm at women while also bombarding players with questions about STIs. Yes. This is a real thing.

Working in a more-or-less respectable office environment, there is absolutely no way I can play this at the moment to report on the … Read More

Twenty years after the launch of the EvermoreGrandiga series, Richard P. Levieux still remains a household name among gamers, comics fans and anime junkies. While there remains, to this day, just two games in the EvermoreGrandiga Saga, the rich fiction has spawned countless cross-media spinoffs. Notoriously wary of giving interviews and spectacularly good at keeping information leaks plugged, little information about the latest game in the series, EvermoreGrandiga: Online since the famous 'postergate' scandal of 2006. After cornering him at a local bookfair, FFWD's intrepid boy reporter, Jeff Kubik, was given the rare opportunity to interview the genius behind the EvermoreGrandiga phenomenon.

FFWD: Thanks for taking … Read More

I started playing BioShock 2 last night, despite resisting pretty much all of the pre-release hype for months. In this I surprised even myself, as I was incredibly, profoundly, spend-an-entire-afternoon-writing-loveletters-to-Ken-Levine-only-to-burn-them-all-later nuts about the first game. Everyone has a special collection of books, films, music and other media that are important to them in a personal way. Before Bioshock, I only had one game on my list. Afterward, I had two.

And still, I resisted. The original designer/writer of the game (Ken Levine) had been replaced by one of the level designers (Jordan Thomas), albeit the one who designed the best area in the game -- Fort Frolic -- as well as Thief: Deadly Shadows’ most lauded … Read More

Before Mark Webb (500 Days of Summer. Ugh.) signed on to direct Sony's reboot of the Spiderman franchise, Wes Anderson's name was briefly bandied about as a potential director. Though either selection seems to me like a cynical attempt to cash in on the popularity of faux-indie deadpan twee, at least Anderson's the genuine article when it comes to faux-indie deadpan twee, and not, well, a hackish Anderson impersonator.

So, yeah, not really looking forward to the reboot. 

Still, this "What If?" scenario concocted by a group of Spiderman/Wes Anderson fans made me grin. They make all the jokes you'd expect them to, but damn if they aren't well-executed. 

(via Comics Alliance)

Interesting, short, well-observed article on the myth of meritocracy on Left Mouse Button. Be sure to berate her in the comments, though. We can't have doubletalk like this gaining traction. Next they'll be wanting equal wages.

Here's the quote that hooked me, from a seventeen year old guild leader on World of Warcraft:

“Girls just aren’t on the same level. Sometimes they’re okay as healers or whatever, and I’d rather have a girl than an empty raid slot, but they lack that primal aggression that a man needs. They don’t need the kill as bad."

It's telling, I think, that all I could think of while reading that was how badly my girlfriend kicks my ass at Puzzle Fighter whenever we play it. Or how bad Natalie, of the review crew, used to when we ran in the same … Read More

That got your attention, didn't it?

You nerd.

While there's been absolutely no indication that Michael Chiklis (the actor famous for playing such grumpy balls of muscle as The Shield's Vick Mackey and the film version of the Fantastic Four's Ben Grimm) will have anything at all to do with the television adaptation of Brian Michael Bendis' beloved comic book series Powers, those of us who are fans of both Mackey and Bendis know that the combination would be a totally fucking awesome one. Do you hear that, FX? This needs to happen.

Anyway, this post comes to you now because Premium Hollywood has posted an interview with FX president John Landgraf which confirms Powers' development as a television series is still going forward and is -- no … Read More