Why I’m Sad Today: Beastie Boys Co-Founder Adam Yauch Dead at 48

via  Scoop.it — ShezCrafti

It’s a sad day for Beastie Boys fans.  Rolling Stone reports:

Adam Yauch, one-third of the pio­neer­ing hip-hop group the Beastie Boys, has died at the age of 48, Rolling Stone has learned. Yauch, also known as MCA, had been in treat­ment for can­cer since 2009. The rap­per was diag­nosed in 2009 after dis­cov­er­ing a tumor in his sali­vary gland.

Yauch sat out the Beastie Boys’ induc­tion to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April, and his treat­ments delayed the release of the group’s most recent album, Hot Sauce Com­mit­tee, Pt. 2. The Beastie Boys had not per­formed live since the sum­mer of 2009, and Yauch’s ill­ness pre­vented the group from appear­ing in music videos for Hot Sauce Com­mit­tee, Pt. 2.

Yauch co-founded the Beastie Boys with Mike “Mike D” Dia­mond and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horowitz in 1979. The band started off as a hard­core punk group, but soon began exper­i­ment­ing with hip-hop. The band broke big with their first proper album, Licensed to Ill, in 1986, and fur­ther albums Paul’s Bou­tique, Check Your Head and Ill Com­mu­ni­ca­tion cemented the band as a true super­star act.

In addi­tion to his career with the Beastie Boys, Yauch was heav­ily involved in the move­ment to free Tibet and co-organized the Tibetan Free­dom Con­certs of the late Nineties. In 2002, he launched the film pro­duc­tion com­pany Oscil­lo­scope Laboratories.

In case it’s not already obvi­ous, ShezCrafti is a nod to my favorite song by the Beastie Boys, a group that I’ve grown up lis­ten­ing to since Licensed to Ill arrived on the scene and blew my young, impres­sion­able mind.

The Beastie Boys have cranked out so much amaz­ing, rel­e­vant music over the years, much of which fea­tures promi­nently on the sound­track to my life experience.

Adam Yauch was an essen­tial part of the group that has con­tributed so much joy to people’s lives. He will be missed.

It’s Zombie Awareness Month. What Are You Doing to Prepare?

In case you didn’t already know,  May is Zom­bie Aware­ness Month . (If you weren’t aware, your chances of sur­vival just sig­nif­i­cantly increased. You’re welcome!)

The Zom­bie Apoc­a­lypse is a sig­nif­i­cant threat to human­ity; just ask those crazy Dooms­day Prep­pers . Matt Mogk, the founder of Zom­bie Aware­ness Month and head of the Zom­bie Research Soci­ety (I only wish my job title were that badass) wants to increase your aware­ness. Accord­ing to Mogk, sparsely pop­u­lated states like Wyoming are your best bet for sur­vival. But if you live in New Jer­sey you’re pretty much fucked.

How do I know the Zom­bie Apoc­a­lypse is real? Have you read the news lately? First there was that tornado-struck lady who was found alive in a body bag  at the morgue even though she was miss­ing half her face, and then there was that baby in Argentina who came back to life after being declared offi­cially dead for 12 hours. I’m not say­ing they’re zom­bies or any­thing, but they’re totally zom­bies. It has to start some­where. Rec­og­nize the signs.

Zom­bie Sur­vival Tips

So, now that you know the Zom­biepoca­lypse is an inevitable real­ity, what are you doing to pre­pare? If zom­bie films, TV shows and games from pop­u­lar cul­ture are to be believed, then your pre­pared­ness strat­egy should con­sist of:

• Plant­ing sun­flow­ers. ( Plants vs. Zom­bies )
• Hid­ing out on a farm. ( Night of the Liv­ing Dead )
• …and bang­ing any hot farmer’s daugh­ters who might be liv­ing there.
  ( <a title=“The Walk­ing Dead — Hershel’s Farm” href=“http://walkingdead.wikia.com/wiki/Hershel” onclick=“javascript:_gaq.push([’_trackEvent’,‘outbound-article’,‘http://walkingdead.wikia.com/wiki/Hershel’]);“s_Farm” target=“_blank”> The Walk­ing Dead )
• Going to the mall. ( Dawn of the Dead )
• Get­ting on a roller coaster. ( Zom­bieland )
• Stock­ing up on Molo­tov cock­tails. ( Left 4 Dead )
• Find­ing a date for prom, stat. ( Dance of the Dead )
• Stop speak­ing. ( Pon­ty­pool )
• Try­ing not to get raped. ( 28 Days Later )
• Putting the fuck­ing cam­era down already. ( [Rec] )

What’s your Zom­biepaca­lypse sur­vival strategy?

X-Entertainment.com Closes, Dinosaur Dracula Coming Soon

I’m a month late post­ing about this, but if I hadn’t had a burn­ing need to re-visit this in-depth arti­cle on Tur­tle Pies today I might have got­ten this news even later than I did:

Matt from X-Entertainment , one of the old­est and best web­sites in the his­tory of ever, has decided to close up shop . As he writes in his lat­est post:

Try this anal­ogy on. It’s a bad one, but try it on any­way.

Let’s say X-E is my car. It’s been a great car. I’ve got­ten a lot of miles out of this car, and it’s taken me to won­der­ful places. But it’s also grown really, really worn, and it’s finally hit a point where it makes more sense to buy some­thing new than to con­tinue putting money/effort into this one.

For the past decade or so, X-Entertainment has been my go-to source for fond remem­brances of all things awe­some from my child­hood. Matt’s site, though a bit rough around the edges and at times hard to nav­i­gate, is like a vir­tual museum of ‘80s pop cul­ture, old toys, cult films, dis­con­tin­ued foods and other lov­ingly curated nuggets of nostalgia.

Just look at some of the things he has in his office:

If you’ve ever thought, “Hey, I won­der if there’s any­body out there who remem­bers __________”, Matt was your guy. And he prob­a­bly wrote a ridicu­lously detailed essay about it. Even though I will never sup­port his assess­ment that The Worst Witch is the most dis­turb­ing movie ever , I love what Matt does and what he’s built over the years.  It’s sites like X-Entertainment that inspired me to start blog­ging in the first place.

What’s Next?

Now Matt is embark­ing on a new jour­ney into nerd­stal­gia with a new web­site that he describes will be  “a ter­rific site, filled with weird and won­der­ful things. Plus what­ever ran­dom crap I find in the clear­ance sec­tion on Ama­zon.” How’s that for a pro­mo­tional teaser?  What­ever Matt has in store for the new ven­ture, it’s name is moth­er­fuck­ing Dinosaur Drac­ula ! If that’s not enough of a rea­son to visit, I don’t know what is.

DinosaurDracula.com will (hope­fully) be launch­ing in June. Until then you can get your nerd on by fol­low­ing Matt on Twit­ter , Tum­blr , and Face­book .

J.K. Rowling to Write New Novel for Adults

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

Ever since Harry Pot­ter ended, rumors have been swirling that J.K. Rowl­ing has been work­ing on a new novel for adults. Today we get con­fir­ma­tion that the rumors are true.

USA Today reports:

The author of mega-selling Harry Pot­ter series has an agree­ment with Lit­tle, Brown in the United States and Britain to pub­lish her first nov­els for grownups. The title, release date and details about the novel, long rumored, were not announced Thurs­day. Her sev­enth and final Pot­ter story came out in 2007.

Via www.usatoday.com

Of the new pub­lish­ing deal, J.K. Rowl­ing says:

“Although I’ve enjoyed writ­ing it every bit as much, my next book will be very dif­fer­ent to the Harry Pot­ter series, which has been pub­lished so bril­liantly by Blooms­bury and my other pub­lish­ers around the world,” Rowl­ing said in a state­ment released by Lit­tle, Brown. “The free­dom to explore new ter­ri­tory is a gift that Harry’s suc­cess has brought me, and with that new ter­ri­tory it seemed a log­i­cal pro­gres­sion to have a new pub­lisher. I am delighted to have a sec­ond pub­lish­ing home in Lit­tle, Brown, and a pub­lish­ing team that will be a great part­ner in this new phase of my writ­ing life.”

We don’t yet know what the the book will be about, or even what genre it belongs to, so it’s anybody’s guess if Rowl­ing will stick to her fan­tasy roots or try some­thing new.  I seem to remem­ber a quote from a few years ago where Rowl­ing said she’d love to write mys­ter­ies one day, so that’s my best guess as to what we can expect.  Her pen­chant for intrigue is a big part of what made the Pot­ter series so great.

I’m sure many fans will be dis­ap­pointed that the big announce­ment isn’t Potter-related  (I’m still hold­ing out hope for a Pot­ter pre­quel about the the  Maraud­ers ).  It’s hard for me to imag­ine what a non-Harry Pot­ter book from J.K. Rowl­ing would be like, espe­cially one that is meant for grownups, but she’s a tal­ented writer and already has enough mass appeal for it to be a suc­cess­ful ven­ture no mat­ter what she writes.

Sneak Peek at Nickelodeon’s Upcoming Animated TMNT Show

Via Scoop.it — Adven­ture Games

We’ve known for a while that Nick was plan­ning a new ani­mated Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles show for 2012, but today we finally get some screenshots!

Some stills of the new TMNT CGI car­toon have turned up on the Toyark. Though some designs of the show were revealed at last week’s Toy­fair, this is really our first look at other char­ac­ters’ actual appear­ance on the show.   The show which will pre­miere on Nick­elodeon, still has no clear release date other than it’ll be show­ing up some­time in 2012. A sneak pre­view has been con­firmed be shown some­time after the Kid’s Choice Awards on March 31, 2012.

Via www.theouthousers.com

Click the link above to check out the full set.

New ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Live Action Film in the Works, Jonathan Liebesman to Direct

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

Hey, remem­ber a few years ago when we heard there’d be a new live-action Ninja Tur­tles film in 2011 and I got all excited about it ?  Just when I was start­ing to give up hope, I saw the news this morning:

Para­mount is in devel­op­ment on a live-action reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles. It has been a rough tran­si­tion so far from comic to fea­ture, but the stu­dio is tak­ing the project in an unex­pected direc­tion. Michael Bay, Brad Fuller, and Andrew Form of Plat­inum Dunes—the pro­duc­tion com­pany behind hor­ror remakes such A Night­mare on Elm Street and Fri­day the 13th—are shep­herd­ing the reboot. The stu­dio assigned the script to Josh Appel­baum and Andre Nemec, the writ­ers who most recently penned the whip-smart Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble – Ghost Protocol.

Now Vari­ety reports Jonathan Liebesman is in nego­ti­a­tions to direct. Liebesman directed Bat­tle: Los Ange­les, and his next project is Wrath of the Titans. He’s the up-and-comer you call when you want a big action film. Tone will always be tricky when your main char­ac­ters are anthro­po­mor­phic tur­tles who know mar­tial arts. But if they can rein­vent TMNT on the level of, say, Bay’s Trans­form­ers… well, that sounds like a blast.

Via collider.com

Cow­abunga says it all.

Is ‘Doomsday Prepper’ Kellene Bishop a Scam Artist?

After Tues­day night’s pre­miere of  National Geo­graphic channel’s new show Dooms­day Prep­pers , I was com­pelled to write this humor­ous blog post pok­ing fun at some of the crazy prep­pers fea­tured on the show, com­par­ing their ridicu­lous stock­pil­ing habits to that of hoard­ers.   Kel­lene Bishop  is one of the prep­pers I wrote about, whose Orem, Utah home is prac­ti­cally a labyrinth of hoarded food stashes.

Kel­lene prides her­self on being self-reliant and finan­cially inde­pen­dent.  She makes her liv­ing as owner of Pre­pared­nessPro , a prep­per blog and com­mu­nity site “devoted to pro­vid­ing guid­ance and encour­age­ment for Peace­ful Pre­pared­ness,” where she also sells expen­sive video-based classes on top­ics such as cheese preser­va­tion, sur­vival san­i­ta­tion, and cook­ing with solar ovens.  She also teaches self-defense classes to women for rape pre­ven­tion, cit­ing that when soci­ety falls apart it is often women who are the first victims.

Watch­ing Kel­lene on Dooms­day Prep­pers , I got the sense the lady was a lit­tle kooky, but I could appre­ci­ate what she was try­ing to do and even admired her sense of pur­pose in help­ing other peo­ple to prepare.

But that was before I heard Kel­lene Bishop might be a scam artist.

Today a ran­dom blog reader alerted me to this Ripoff Report about Kel­lene Bishop ‘s shady past run­ning her own com­mer­cial lend­ing bro­ker­age, in which she appar­ently swin­dled peo­ple out of hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars.  She later filed for bank­ruptcy to the tune of 2 mil­lion dol­lars in 2009.

Here’s a sam­pling of some of the claims made against Kel­lene Bishop and her hus­band Scott, which I’ll let speak for them­selves:

“It is offi­cial! The ugly cou­ple have had their ille­gal debts dis­charged!  They had over 2 mil­lion dol­lars dis­charged after offer a course that guar­an­teed $750,000.00 dol­lars a year to their cus­tomers! My oh my how the Ter­ri­ble Two know how to man­age money!  SHE NEVER CLOSED A COMMERCIAL LOAN IN HER LIFE AND PORTRAYED HERSELF AS A GURU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“Kel­lene Bishop, a scam­mer who ran a course called Com­mer­cial Career, now runs Preparednesspro.com.  She recently wrote a despi­ca­ble blog about the hard money world and the loan com­mit­ment fees involved.  THIS CRAZY PIG DID THE SAME EXACT THING AND MORE WITH HER COMMERCIAL CAREER COURSE. SHE TOOK HUGE RETAINER FEES THAT THE HARD MONEY PEOPLE COULD ONLY DREAM OF AND DIDN’T HAVE ANY SOURCES TO FUND THE LOANS!  She then claimed bank­ruptcy for over TWO MILLION DOLLARS!”

“What did the Big K do after she got sued by hun­dreds of peo­ple whom she took huge retainer fees from?  She claimed bank­ruptcy for 2 mil­lion dol­lars!”

“Take a look at the bank­ruptcy papers. Her list of cred­i­tors were a mile a long and she scammed every sin­gle one. She lied to Nat Geo about work­ing in Cor­po­rate Amer­ica because she never did. She ran scam busi­nesses out of her house that was worth less than $200,000.00.”

And here are some of their reac­tions to Kellene’s appear­ance on Dooms­day Prep­pers :

“Kel­lene Bishop has been filmed show­cas­ing thou­sands of dol­lars worth of food at her home in Utah. She does not men­tion that fore­clo­sure pro­ceed­ings have started and the fore­clo­sure on her home fea­tured in the show is highly prob­a­ble.  Once again, she has por­trayed her­self as being a right­eous and self-relying per­son yet the truth is the com­plete oppo­site. She claims the end of days are near. The real­ity is that her days are num­bered in her home because she spent all of her money on food instead of ful­fill­ing her oblig­a­tion to pay her mort­gage.”

“It is ironic that Ms. Bishop has stock­piled enough food to fill a super­mar­ket because she has come up with the per­fect recipe for her dis­as­ter.  Why on Earth would Kel­lene actu­ally sign on with Nat Geo to allow them to film her stock­piled food so all of the good­ies saved for dooms­day can aired on national tele­vi­sion after claim­ing Chap­ter 7? Think about it because her bank­ruptcy papers do not lie. They clearly show that her new busi­ness, Pre­pared­ness Pro, did not make any money as recently as 2009. The ques­tion for her cred­i­tors, the attor­neys for her mort­gage com­pany and the bank­ruptcy trustee should be: Where did Kel­lene & Scott Bishop get the money to buy that much food?”

“Per­haps Nat Geo should do a fol­low up on the Bish­ops when the fore­clo­sure is com­pleted on their home in Utah. If might turn into a Dog Day After­noon when Kel­lene and Scott defend the bun­ga­low like it is the Alamo when the bank shows up to take it back. They clearly demon­strated how they are heav­ily armed and ready to com­mu­ni­cate by Morse code under the cover of dark­ness.”

Did National Geo­graphic fail to do a back­ground check on this woman?  Is it eth­i­cal to put Kel­lene Bishop on a national tele­vi­sion show where she’s por­trayed as a cham­pion of moral­ity, self-sufficiency and finan­cial freedom?

Fur­ther read­ing:   Scar­ing Peo­ple for a Liv­ing — Kel­lene Bishop

Update 2/24/11:

One of the com­menters who spoke up against The Bish­ops on this blog has requested via email that I remove their com­ment, due to being threat­ened by The Bish­ops with legal action.  All com­ments by this per­son as well as ref­er­ences to this person’s name in other people’s coments have been removed upon request.

I’ve also noticed that com­ments made in defense of The Bish­ops seem to be com­ing from an IP  address located in Orem, Utah–the same city where  The Bish­ops reside. Isn’t it ironic…don’t you think?

Buffy the Fetus Slayer? Latest Buffy Comic Tackles Abortion

Via  Scoop.it  -  Shezcrafti

In Buffy The Vam­pire Slayer , Sea­son 9 issue #6, the comic takes an unex­pected and con­tro­ver­sial direction:

USA Today reports that in today’s issue of Buffy The Vam­pire Slayer Sea­son 9 from Dark Horse Comics, Buffy shares her newly dis­cov­ered sta­tus as a preg­nant woman with her fam­ily and friends. She pre­sumes that the vam­pire on-again-off-again lover Spike is the father, although there’s some plot-purposeful inde­ci­sion about that. And hey, it may just turn out that there’s some mys­ti­cal energy inside her or some­thing. I’m sure there’s plenty of super­nat­ural odd­ness to come. But more con­tro­ver­sially, the comic explores her deci­sion to have an abortion.

Via www.bleedingcool.com

Joss Whe­don defends the choice:  “It’s not some­thing we would ever take lightly, because you can’t. You don’t. It’s not an easy thing for any­one.  Buffy was always about the arc of a life, and it wasn’t ever going to be one of those shows where they were per­pet­u­ally in high school and never asked why. It was about change. So there’s never a time when Buffy’s life isn’t relevant.”

I applaud Joss Whe­don for hav­ing the balls to tackle such an incred­i­bly polar­iz­ing issue, but I ques­tion his deci­sion to do it through Buffy. It changes how I feel about her char­ac­ter. For some­one who has always been about sav­ing lives, how could Buffy destroy the life inside her?

This is not a pro-life rant, and abor­tion is some­thing that I don’t have strong feel­ings about one way or the other; it’s just not rel­e­vant to me. But it is some­thing that seems totally out-of-character for Buffy.  Of course we won’t know the out­come of Buffy’s del­i­cate sit­u­a­tion until the next issue, so I’ll reserve judge­ment until then.

How do you feel about it?

44% of the US are Gamers

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

We’re on our way to tak­ing over the world!

Accord­ing to the Parks’ study, Trends in Dig­i­tal Gam­ing: Free-to-Play, Social, and Mobile Games, the num­ber of US gamers has increased by 241 per­cent from 2008 to 2011. Today, in a nation with a pop­u­la­tion of nearly 307 mil­lion, 135 mil­lion of those peo­ple are clas­si­fied as gamers; that’s up from 56 mil­lion in 2008. Parks defines a gamer as “indi­vid­u­als in a broad­band house­hold who play at least one hour per month.

In three years, 44 per­cent of the coun­try is now gam­ing thanks to a rise in social net­work­ing and mobile adop­tion. If the trend con­tin­ues with the same momen­tum, we could see a major­ity of the coun­try plant­ing vir­tual crops and set­ting up vir­tual kingdoms.

Via www.digitaltrends.com

Now the real ques­tion is: should play­ing Far­mVille count as “gaming”?

Rumor: Is Rocksteady Working on a ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Game? [False]

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

God I hope this is true:

TDW Geek by way of Paul Gale is report­ing that Rocksteady’s next game is called The Man­hat­tan Cri­sis… a Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles game. If you’ve played the stand­out Bat­man: Arkham Asy­lum or its even more acclaimed sequel, Arkham City, I don’t have to tell you how incred­i­ble this col­lab­o­ra­tion would be.

Via www.ology.com

How amaz­ing would this be?  I’m a huge Tur­tles fan, but I can do with­out most of the campy, car­toon­ish TMNT games of yes­ter­year. It’s time for a darker, grit­tier TMNT game!

Update:  As of 3:30 PM today, Kotaku is report­ing that Rock­steady chief Sefton Hill has con­firmed this report is false.  Aw, man. :(

5 New Midseason TV Shows for Geeks & Comic Book Fans

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

ComicBook.com has a good round-up of 5 new(ish) TV shows that comic book geeks would prob­a­bly enjoy.

The hol­i­day sea­son is over, which means the Char­lie Brown Christ­mas spe­cials are done, and new episodes of return­ing shows and mid­sea­son replace­ments are start­ing.  Of course among return­ing TV shows, comic book fans have The Big Bang The­ory, Fringe, and The Walk­ing Dead.

How­ever, the excit­ing news is that there are sev­eral brand new mid­sea­son shows that should be of inter­est to comic book fans. Here’s our list of the top new TV shows for comic book fans.

Via comicbook.com

Here’s what’s on the list:

• Napoleon Dyna­mite (pre­miered Jan. 15 )  —  The quirky ani­mated com­edy series based on the pop­u­lar movie, voiced by the orig­i­nal film’s actors.
• Celebrity Appren­tice (pre­miers Feb. 12)  — Why is this on the list? Mainly because this sea­son stars Lour Fer­rigno & George Takei.
• The River (pre­mieres tonight/Feb. 7)  — A new paranormal/horror adventure-ish series that takes place along the Amazon
• Comic Book Men ( pre­mieres Feb. 12) — Another new AMC show, pro­duced by Kevin Smith. Must-see TV for comic book fans.
• Alca­traz (pre­miered Jan. 16)  — This JJ Abrams & Jorge Gar­cia “Lost-esque” show is based on the dis­ap­pear­ances of over 300 inmates and 40 guards, and gov­ern­ment cover-ups sur­round­ing the mys­te­ri­ous prison. Looks awe­some, but I haven’t had the chance to see it yet.

I’d also add to this list Touch , the new super­nat­ural show on Fox that stars Kiefer Suther­land. It pre­miered on Jan. 25 as a “spe­cial pre­view” and will begin reg­u­larly on March 19.

Are you watch­ing or do you plan to catch any of these? I want to know your thoughts about them.

Must Watch: ‘The Hunger Games’ Epic New Trailer

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

Jen­nifer Lawrence, Eliz­a­beth Banks and Wil­low Shields come together in an epic new trailer for the Hunger Games. It pro­vides a fresh look at the dreary cap­i­tal of Panem and some new action shots of Kat­niss, and we also get to hear more of the film’s score.

Now I REALLY can’t wait to see this movie!

Via www.theimproper.com

First In-Game Screenshots of ‘The Last Of Us’ are Beautiful, Amazingly Detailed

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

Game Informer has the lat­est new screen­shots from The Last of Us , Naughty Dog’s upcom­ing sur­vival hor­ror action/adventure game, and they are absolutely breath­tak­ing.  It’s hard to believe these are actual, in-game screen­shots. It’s clear that Naughty Dog is really step­ping up their game with this release, push­ing PS3’s graph­ics proces­sors to the limit.  Head on over to Game Informer to see all four of these beauties.

The Last of Us  is set in a post-apocalyptic world where fun­gus has infected humans’ brains and turned them into zom­bies, but Naughty Dog insists that it’s not another mind­less “zom­bie game.”  The game will focus on the rela­tion­ship between the two main pro­tag­o­nists, sur­vivor man Joel and his 14-year old daugh­ter, Ellie.

The Last of Us  is due for release some­time in the last quar­ter of 2012.

Via www.gameinformer.com

Would you drink this cleverly-named ‘Princess Bride’ inspired wine?

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

Alamo Draft­house has announced the launch of a sig­na­ture wine inspired by THE PRINCESS BRIDE in honor of the 25th anniver­sary of the film. The name of this sig­na­ture wine pro­gram, “The Bot­tle Of Wits,” is derived from the iconic “bat­tle of wits” scene when West­ley first res­cues Princess But­ter­cup from Vizzini and his henchmen.

Via veryaware.com

It’ll go great with an MLT!  (That’s mut­ton, let­tuce, and tomato.)

TERA’s Closed Beta Signup Opens

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

En Masse has offi­cially opened closed beta signups for its upcom­ing MMORPG TERA.

Via www.mmocrunch.com

Abraham Lincoln Kicking Some Undead Ass In New Vampire Hunter Image

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

Not one to be con­fused with Steven Spielberg’s devel­op­ing Lin­coln project, Bekmambetov’s genre splice re-imagines our 16th pres­i­dent as a vam­pire slayer stomp­ing through the Civil War-era United States.
Via www.cinemablend.com

Coming Soon: ‘The Art of Video Games’ Exhibit (Or, Why I’m Glad I Live Near D.C.)

The Smith­son­ian Amer­i­can Art Museum will explore video games as art in its upcom­ing exhibit, The Art of Video Games .   The exhibit will show­case 80 video games, from the early days of Atari and Cole­co­V­i­sion to today’s next-gen con­soles like Xbox 360 and Playsta­tion 3.

Among the famil­iar titles included: Pac-Man, Pit­fall!, The Leg­end of Zelda, Final Fan­tasy VII, Rez (pic­ture above), Por­tal, Heavy Rain, and holy shit is that ChuChu Rocket I see on the list?  Here is the full list of fea­tured games .  The selected games were cho­sen by pub­lic vote, and were whit­tled down from a list of over 240 titles.  (Which helps to explain why some obvi­ous choices didn’t make the cut. Braid  and  Grim Fan­dango  come to mind.)

If you don’t live near D.C, you may still be able to attend.  The exhibit will be trav­el­ling to sev­eral other major cities, includ­ing Boca Raton, Seat­tle, New York, Toledo, Flint, and Mem­phis.  Click the link for details.

The Art of Video Games exhibit will debut March 16 and remain open until Sep­tem­ber 30, 2012.

‘Star Wars: Uncut’ is a Fan-made Orgy of Nerds, Memes, Kittens and Light Sabers

The premise:  the orig­i­nal Star Wars movie cut into 15-second seg­ments to be re-filmed by thou­sands of fans and then care­fully edited together into an amus­ing patch­work of fan-generated footage.  The result­ing film is an awe­some retelling of Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope  through the eyes and cre­ative tal­ents of Star Wars fans around the world.

Star Wars: Uncut  was the genius idea of  Casey Pugh , a 26 year old web devel­oper and (one assumes) seri­ous Star Wars fan.

“I was work­ing as a web devel­oper for Vimeo and I was doing a lot of video-based stuff, but I was also think­ing about how I could enable film­mak­ers to cre­ate either short films or feature-length films together remotely,” he says. “I bounced an idea off my friends but I had no idea it would blow up to this scale–it’s just crazy.”

Crazy or not, Star Wars: Uncut  earned Pugh and his col­lab­o­ra­tors an Emmy award (the 2010 Prime­time Emmy for Out­stand­ing Cre­ative Achieve­ment In Inter­ac­tive Media — Fic­tion, to be precise).

Despite being a diverse mashup of live-action, clay­ma­tion, stop-motion, kit­tens, hand drawn ani­ma­tions, CGI, hand pup­pets, babies, Legos,  men and women in drag, Pop­si­cle sticks, paper­craft, and prac­ti­cally every other type of style and imagery you can think of, Star Wars: Uncut  man­ages to stay true to the orig­i­nal film’s nar­ra­tive and is rec­og­niz­able to any­one who has seen it.

Most of the clips are silly, unre­hearsed videos of the viral sort (com­plete with trash can R2D2s and news­pa­per hats).  But there are also pol­ished, beautiful-looking scenes from tal­ented fans whom you can tell put forth a lot of time and effort.

The entire film was recently released to the inter­net masses and you can watch it right here:

Star Wars: Uncut  is a film made by Star Wars fans for Star Wars fans.  I promise it will be the most fun and enter­tain­ing two hours of your life.

Nickelodeon Unmasks New TMNT Animated TV Series

Cour­tesy of EW.com , Nick­elodeon has unveiled the first teaser for its new Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tle ani­mated TV show, which is set to air in 2012. Nick has ordered 26 half-hour episodes for the show’s first sea­son, and promises the new TMNT will be “fun­nier and ninja-ier.” (What­ever that means.)

Sharp TMNT fans should notice right away that Michae­lan­gelo and Donatello’s weapons are dif­fer­ent. Why the change? It makes me won­der about what other friv­o­lous changes Nick might make to the char­ac­ters. And I have to admit, I’m not super impressed with the ani­ma­tion style.

Here are some still images of each Tur­tle so you can get a bet­ter look at them:

As just one of the mil­lions of kids who grew up with the Ninja Tur­tles, it’s awe­some to once again see new life being given to this beloved fran­chise. With so many failed, embar­rass­ing incar­na­tions lit­ter­ing the annals of TV past (read: Hero Tur­tles: The Next Muta­tion ), I just hope that Nick will be the net­work that finally gives TMNT the treat­ment it deserves.

TMNT Fans: What do you think of the direc­tion Nick is going in so far?

DO NOT WANT! A Whedon-less Buffy Movie

In case you missed yesterday’s news, it was announced that Atlas Enter­tain­ment and Warner Bros. will be “reboot­ing” Buffy the Vam­pire Slayer for the big screen.  A new Buffy movie is planned for 2012–and Joss Whe­don has noth­ing to do with it.

“There is an active fan­base eagerly await­ing this character’s return to the bigscreen,” says pro­ducer Charles Roven of Atlas Entertainment.

True, there are legions of pas­sion­ate Buffy fans who are among the most devoted of any fan­dom.  That would be the “active fan­base” Mr. Roven is refer­ring to.  But he’s got the “bigscreen” part all wrong.  It was the small screen that estab­lished Buffy as a pop cul­ture phe­nom­e­non, not that dread­ful 1992 Kristy Swan­son movie–proof that Hol­ly­wood ruins every­thing, even when Joss Whe­don is involved.

The TV show  Buffy the Vam­pire Slayer may not have had a huge bud­get with cut­ting edge spe­cial effects, but its lack of pol­ish was made up for by great writ­ing, only made pos­si­ble by a man who attained the cre­ative free­dom nec­es­sary to cre­ate his ideal vision.  So revered is Buffy’s cre­ator and so sacred is his source mate­r­ial that the idea of a new Buffy  movie in any­one else’s hands just seems blasphemous.

So how could this pos­si­bly be a good idea?

Oh, I for­got. Warner Bros. only cares about money.