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

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.

iPad with Wings

To the delight of Mac geeks and fan­boys every­where,  Apple unveiled its hotly antic­i­pated tablet today.  Its unfor­tu­nate name? The iPad.

Almost imme­di­ately, the Twit­ter­verse was rife with men­strual humor.  Here are a few of my favorite jabs:

@ThirtyTwoTwelve:  #iTa­m­pon there’s an app for twat.

@matthewathome:  Will Apple release a (Red) edi­tion of the iPad once a month? #iTampon

@Nickdstm:  #iTa­m­pon for only $499, no strings attached!

@stoogyruby:   iPads are for 8th graders. I’m wait­ing for the iTa­m­pon, because I pre­fer to do all my inter­net­ing from inside my vagina.

And of course, because we’re all just a bunch of imma­ture ass­holes, #iTa­m­pon became a top trend­ing topic.

Update:  It was inevitable.

Tim Burton’s Gallery of the Weird and Wonderful

Check out the awe­some new gallery over at www.TimBurton.com, which is a teaser to pro­mote upcom­ing limited-edition book The Art of Tim Bur­ton.  The book will con­tain over 400 pages fea­tur­ing 1,000 illus­tra­tions from the imag­i­na­tive (and lov­ably twisted) mind of Tim Bur­ton.  The gallery is com­pletely flash ani­mated, and is one of the coolest and most cre­ative uses of Flash I’ve seen.

Vis­i­tors are invited to user their mouse or key­board to nav­i­gate Stain Boy, the on-screen char­ac­ter who guides you through the gallery.  Kinda like play­ing a video game, you can move Stain Boy through doors, get close-up views of art­work hang­ing on the “walls”, and occa­sion­ally he’ll do some kooky things.  Oh, and be sure to turn your sound up to catch the whim­si­cal Sugar Plum Fairy music.

If you sign up with an email address, you’ll get access to the Pri­vate Gallery, which fea­tures addi­tional Burton-esque good­ness.  Sign­ing up will also get you on the mail­ing list to receive news and updates about The Art of Tim Bur­ton. I imag­ine there’s going to be huge demand for this book, so bet­ter keep your beady lit­tle eyes on this one.

With the first trailer for Burton’s Alice in Won­der­land released ear­lier this week and the announce­ment that both Bur­ton and Depp will begin work on a Dark Shad­ows movie, this is shap­ing up to be one hell of a good week for Tim Bur­ton fans.  Thanks to @simplyburton for shar­ing the gallery news!

Nintendo at E3: Epic Yawn, for the Most Part

Fol­low­ing along with Nintendo’s E3 press con­fer­ence on Twit­ter, the live reac­tions were less than enthu­si­as­tic.  Well, it’s no won­der with a pre­sen­ter like this:

Does she look excited about Nin­tendo to you?

For the most part, Nintendo’s pre­sen­ta­tion ambled along like an old woman with a bad hip.  The over­all expe­ri­ence was so blah, #nin­tend­o­fail was in dan­ger of becom­ing a trend­ing topic for a while there.

These were the lowlights:

• Wii Fit Plus — Some minor improve­ments to Wii Fit, such as omit­ting wait-times between exer­cises and the abil­ity to tar­get spe­cific areas.  Riveting!
• Wii Motion­Plus — Add-on hard­ware to make the Wiimote sen­sors more pre­cise.  Will run you about $20 for some­thing that makes the Wii func­tion the way it’s sup­posed to.  Oh and by the way, some new games will require it, like Red Steel 2.
  (notic­ing a trend here with the tack­ing “Plus” onto everything?)
• Ter­ri­ble scripted jokes between Bill and Reggie.
• Final Fan­tasy Crys­tal Chron­i­cles: Crys­tal Bear­ers — Yet another Final Fan­tasy title…
• Women’s Mur­der Club: Games of Pas­sion — New “inter­ac­tive fic­tion” game series for DS, adding another nail to the cof­fin of real adven­ture games.
• Style Savvy — Yet another brain­less pink-packaged game aimed at tweenaged girls.
• DSi cir­cle jerk: over 1M units sold in less than 2 months, and DSi gamers will soon be able to share pho­tos on Facebook.
• Wii Vital­ity Sen­sor — Periph­eral that mon­i­tors pulse rate, ner­vous­ness, etc. I don’t even know what the fuck to say about this…

I’m on the fence about:

• Leg­end of Zelda: Spirit Tracks — Demo playable at E3 this week, but didn’t like the few screen­shots we saw.
• Mario vs. Don­key Kong — Play­ers will be able to design their own lev­els, game­play looked kinda fun.
• Golden Sun DS
• War­i­or­Ware DIY — Gamers can design their own minigames from scratch & share with friends; kinda neat, I guess.
• Res­i­dent Evil: The Dark­side Chron­i­cals — Another on-rails shooter from the RE franchise.

But there were a few sprin­kles of cool:

• Wii Sports Resort — Bas­ket­ball, archery, sky­div­ing & more.
• Super Mario Galaxy sequel — yes, yes, yes!  The demo looked awe­some, the graph­ics bright and beautiful.

And then, sav­ing the best for last, Nin­tendo made up for much of its E3 snorefest with the announce­ment of…

Metroid: Other M

Okay, seri­ously, I want this game NOW!

Update: Penny Arcade sums up my feel­ings exactly.

LOTR Fan Film: $3,000 of Awesome

What can you do with $3,000 and a group of ded­i­cated LOTR fans?  Make a kick-ass fan movie, that’s what.  The Hunt for Gol­lum is a 40-minute fan-made film based on the Lord of the Rings books and movies.  And more impor­tantly, it’s good.  Sur­pris­ingly so.

Based on Tolkien’s appen­dices, The Hunt for Gol­lum remains true to its source mate­r­ial and fits in nicely with the three offi­cial Peter Jack­son films.  The story is a pre­quel of sorts that fol­lows Aragorn on his quest from Gan­dalf to track down and cap­ture the crea­ture Gol­lum, who knows the where­abouts of the One Ring.  It takes place before Gan­dalf returns to The Shire, to warn Frodo of the dan­gers of his burden.

Every­thing from the cos­tumes and make-up to the film’s score and act­ing is well done, and closely mim­ics Jackson’s style of direc­tion and visual effects.  The fight scenes were epic and well choreographed.  

Even Gol­lum looks and sounds great:

It’s an impres­sive accom­plish­ment for such a lim­ited bud­get (the entire cast and crew worked for free).  Huge props to the film­mak­ers, who are as tal­ented as they are ded­i­cated.  The film was released today, May 3rd, and is avail­able to watch free online.  You can also check out the mak­ing of this epic under­tak­ing here.  Visit www.TheHuntForGollum.com, or click  the ban­ner below.  If you’re a LOTR fan, I highly rec­om­mend you go watch it—NOW!