Like I said, I’m ready for Mr. Timberlake to take the now-vacant throne.

I went out and got the newest addition to the Prince of Persia video game franchise today. I’ve been playing it on my GameCube for the last few hours, and it’s truly fun. I had been hearing raves about it over at Penny Arcade (beware, R-rated language over there), and their opinions, combined with the reviews I saw on the Net (here’s one), and this cool exposé pushed me over the edge. I ran to the store tonight to pick it up.

I won’t go into all the specifics, but let me give you a few hooks the game throws out to the fish who play it. First off, the Prince himself has over 700 different moves he can perform, so he’s very lifelike. He’s even more acrobatic than Eddie! Can you believe that?!? It would take a video game character to pull that off, I think. He runs up walls, and runs up his enemies (it looks stylistically similar to The Matrix in that way). He spins on horizontal bars and leaps from pole to pole. He can stab the guy in front of him while kicking the guy behind him. Overall, this guy does more backflipping, hand-springing, and ledge-sliding than Mary Lou Retton could ever dream to do. Especially ledge-sliding.

One of the coolest parts of the game is the manipulation of time. Once you’ve gotten to the first objective in the game, you have the ability to rewind time for a few seconds using a magical power. Did you just accidentally jump off a cliff? No problem. Rewind time. The prince will go flying back up into the air and back on top of the cliff again. Did someone stab you? Rewind time! Miss that Gilmore Girls episode? Rewind time. Suddenly, making mistakes isn’t such a pain, and it doesn’t interrupt the flow of the game as much as it has traditionally. You can only rewind so much before your magic runs out and needs a refill, but it’s still fun.

I encourage you, if you have a GameCube, PS2, or XBox, to go out and at least rent it, so that you can become giddy with glee and go buy it the next day.

As already mentioned in Steph’s blog, American Splendor is really quite an awesome movie in our humble opinion, and you really ought to go see it if you like movies that are good. The characters are interesting. The way they do… stuff… is very interesting. It’s like a documentary, but also not at all like a documentary. All clear? This probably won’t clarify things at all.

Confused? All you need is this webpage right here. Just type in your zip code. Go ahead, I’ll wait. See how it shows you all the theaters anywhere near you that are showing the movie and when they’re showing it? That’s mighty useful information if you actually want to lay eyes on the flick. Plus, it’s one of those "independent" films, so depending on what kinds of theaters you have near you, it might even be a little cheaper to see.

If you don’t have it playing near you, let me know, and I’ll cry a tear in my sarsaparilla for you. Assuming moving your dwelling place to somewhere with better theaters isn’t an option, I’ll do y’all a favor and mention it when it comes out on DVD.

If you’ve seen it, make a comment in the Peanut Gallery (or even if you haven’t, I guess).

The end is near. The movie to end all movies is scheduled to go into filming and production sometime in 2004, and I am so pumped!

Stephanie pointed out this link to me a few days ago, and when we saw that Tim Burton would be directing Charlie and the Cholocate Factory, we couldn’t help but discuss over and over who Willy Wonka might be. At first I thought that no one could out-do Gene Wilder’s performance, and that Burton could get away with re-casting him. But then I realized that was a totally unoriginal idea, and not something Burton would ever do. Plus, Wilder is probably too old now.

So Steph and I got to talking. Who would Wonka be? We threw out a few names. Dustin Hoffman (being that he can play anyone perfectly). Johnny Depp seemed to be a strong player since he’s about the right age and has a strange magical sparkle to him. Then Steph said, “What about Christopher Walken? He could even do a dance number since he’s a pro dancer.” My first reaction was, “No, Christopher Walken is too dark for Wonka.”

Then I thought about it some more. And more. And more.

Christopher Walken would be perfect. I forgot that Tim Burton is directing this film. It’s going to be dark no matter what, but still have that certain sense of innocence and magical playfullness that Burton puts into all his films. And Walken could pull that off perfectly. Not that I would disagree with Depp being cast. I would love to see that too. But the idea of Walken as Wonka really appeals to me. Steph agrees.

Then Steph found this just a few minutes ago. Take a look under the “technical details” section. Johnny Depp. Christopher Walken. Michael Keaton? Well, okay, I didn’t see that one coming, but still. It seems Burton agrees with us. Granted, these are rumors, but I’m very interested to see how this all plans out.

That’s gonna be one great movie.

I’ve been quivering in my seat ever since I saw the post-it note stuck to Strong Bad’s monitor this week. Then I clicked the word “CD” and almost fell out of my chair.

Please, oh Brothers Chaps, makers of Home Star Runner et all, speed the production of such a project so that I might lay down my hard-earned cash to purchase such a musical venture.

I’m going to be the #1 listener of that CD on Audioscrobbler. I can tell you that right now.

PS> If you follow that link after one week from today, the post-it I mentioned will most likely not be there. But maybe you can find the CD somewhere in the HSR store!

Have you heard about Bravo’s new TV show? Have a peek at this QuickTime movie (get QuickTime here) to get an idea of the hook for the show. Basically, it teaches us a few valuable lessons:

• Straight guys are slobs.
• Gay guys are wonderful and perfect.
• Gay guys can help straight guys, if only by making them more like the gay guys

Well, this is wonderful, isn’t it? Thank you, TV! How would I ever receive such bigoted, anti-heterosexual, elitist programming unless you were around?

I honestly don’t understand, after seeing stuff like this, why I’m supposedly the intolerant one. It’s this idea of “helping” that is supposed to be intolerant, right? If I’m really politically correct, I’m supposed to believe that I’ve got nothing to teach anyone, and nothing I can help them with, because they’re “right in their own way.” Well, this show certainly doesn’t hold to that idea.

Of course, we can’t forget that it’s actually only conservative Republican Christians (especially if they’re white and male) that we’re allowed to criticize. Everyone else is off limits.

Tonight Steph and I went to see the musical Bat Boy, and it was hilarious. There were certainly themes and scenes which didn’t settle right with me (big surprise considering most media gets that tag) but overall it was a very fun production, and just ridiculous and strange enough to never lose my attention.

One of the interesting parts of the evening was facilitated by the fact that I bought the tickets very early after they went on sale, and I got them for a Tuesday night. Unfortunately I didn’t pay much attention to where the seats were, I just accepted what I got and thought they’d probably be good enough. It turns out they were really good. Well, actually, too good. I could have literally stretched out my arm and touched the face of the leading male at one point in the musical. Without having to lean forward very far. I swear I am not making this up. Granted, it helped that he was laying on the floor at the time (chewing on a plush bunny rabbit toy), but still. That counts!

Another thing that I liked about Bat Boy was the fact that there were more characters in the story than cast members (done very purposefully), so to add to the obvious humor of the musical cast members would change characters on stage during dialogue. So one cast member would simultaneously play one female character with a wig and a pink coat, one male character with a red shirt, and a male farmer with a cowboy hat. So the female in pink would be in a conversation, and someone would say, “Let’s ask farmer brown!” and look over and there would be a hat sitting on a box. Then the actor would look like they suddenly realized “Oh! That’s me!” and run over and throw off the wig and put the hat on and start talking. It was really funny. They didn’t do it so much that it was annoying, but just enough that you never knew when to expect it. It worked well.

Overall, I would give it an 88%, missing the mark of 100% for a couple offensive scenes and a slightly derogatory attitude towards Christians. But I’m saving that for another entry. 🙂