loonyblog.

WARNING: This post violates the rules.

I know I’ve done some major rule breaking on this site recently, but there’s been a lot of fun CivRev stuff to talk about. To that, I’d like to add today’s NYTimes review by Seth Schiesel, which is pretty favorable. Here’s an excerpt:

…Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution is an almost complete triumph. Melding formidable intellectual depth with an unintimidating, relatively easy-to-grasp graphical presentation, the new Civilization is by far the best strategy game to grace a living room console. This is a console game that history and social studies teachers should encourage their students to enjoy. This is a game that parents should want to play with their children. And this is a game that will then incite some parents to send their kids to bed so the old folks don’t have to share.

Needless to say, I agree.

Man, here’s some deeply sad news…as reported by Janice “GirlBomb” Erlbaum, Mark “JUDGECAL” Chamberlain has died.

I’m in shock. As I’m sure anyone who knew him even casually will tell you, Cal was one of the nicest and most fun people I’ve ever met. He was a geek with the soul of a punk rocker. A Billy Idol look-a-like who loved Judge Dredd. He was truly one of a kind.

He was also one of my early gateways into the gaming industry. My career can be directly traced back through those days at QuakeCast (and Shooters, our post-Quake QuakeCast).

Janice (who is a professional writer these days, with multiple books under her belt) wrote far more eloquently than I can on the subject. I heartily recommend reading her eulogy.

Rock on, JUDGECAL. You will be missed.

I would recommend this person do a little light reading on the subject, but it seems sort of pointless.

 

The trailer from the upcoming direct-to-DVD Wonder Woman animated movie that was shown at the San Diego con has been posted over at Yahoo! Movies. And you know what? It’s not bad. Not bad at all.

Not that I thought it was going to suck or anything…the DC animated movies so far have been largely pretty good…Superman/Doomsday was decent and New Frontier, while nowhere near as good as the source material, was pretty good too. Gotham Knight was pretty awful, but I don’t know who to blame for that, so the less said the better.

In any event, this looks pretty good. The voice cast isn’t bad…Keri Russell wouldn’t have been my first choice for Diana, but her one line in the trailer seems right on. Nathan Fillion should be a good Steve Trevor, and I’m totally on-board with Virginia Madsen and Alfred Molina as Hippolyta and Ares respectively.

It won’t be out until next year, but the director Lauren Montgomery has kept a semi-regular blog for a while (which I’ve been reading without ever realizing what she’s been working on), so hopefully more updates will show up there soon. Even if she doesn’t, it’s worth reading for the artwork she posts from time to time.

Anyway, with the live action movie dead in the water (until the next attempt, anyway), this is all the Wonder Woman we’re gonna get anytime soon, and that’s just fine with me…I still think Jessica Biel is the only person who can play the role (and she doesn’t want to do it).

Bandwidth leachers are on the prowl again…after all those RSS readers blew up the last time I tried to do something about this problem I decided to be nice and make my rules much less stringent…but apparently that just encourages more direct linking, so I’ve made it harder again.

Please do me a favor and post in the comments if you don’t see a lovely picture of Nicole Kidman below. If you instead see my redirect image, let me know where you’re viewing the site from and I’ll do something about it.

WARNING: This post violates the rules.

That podcast interview I mentioned a couple of weeks back has been posted over at Apolyton. Head over there to download or stream it, or just click below if you’d like to listen to me ramble about various Civ-related topics.

Thanks to Dan and Annalee for putting up with me and my tendency to answer a question with frequently nonsensical responses. It was fun.

Tim Burton has cast the lead in his upcoming adaptation of Alice in Wonderland…the lucky young lady? Mia Wasikowska, an Australian actress.

She looks the part all right, but there’s just one teensy little problem: she’s eighteen years old. Which is about seven or eight years too old to play the role.

…and with that, Tim Burton’s Alice takes a turn for the decidedly creepy. I fully admit that I was already quite concerned about this movie back when it was first announced last December, but all I really care is that they make Alice in Wonderland into a children’s movie like the source material was intended to be. By casting an 18 year old (even a young-looking one) we’re already into creepy, dirty old man territory.

Let’s be honest here: the world doesn’t need a live action adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. I like the Disney movie just fine (always have, always will). But if you’re going to do it, for god’s sake, do it right.

Alice - my Alice, not the fictional one - will probably be old enough to see her first movie in theaters by the time this comes out. It would have been nice if the movie in question was her namesake. And while I’m not willing to write this off completely, I already have visions of Helena Bonham Carter as a terrifying Queen of Hearts (unconfirmed, but you know that’s the next announcement) and loads of inappropriate material for very young children.

Sigh.

I’ve been extremely busy the last couple of weeks, but in case you missed it, the first Watchmen trailer was released. If you haven’t seen it, go watch it now.

I can wait.

Okay then.

It looks…good. I firmly believe that this movie simply should not exist. Watchmen was created to be a meticulously detailed comic, and a movie doesn’t seem necessary in any way. Not only that, but trying to cram that story into a two hour movie is basically sacrilege. But once you get past that, it’s tough to argue that some of the images in that trailer are very encouraging (pretty much all the ones with Dr. Manhattan, who looks perfect).

I remain troubled by the casting of both incarnations of Silk Spectre. The fact that they felt the need to cast a Swedish supermodel in a major role just doesn’t sit right with me. But the rest of the images look good, and it’s hard to ignore the accuracy to the source material.

But I was thinking about it earlier, and something odd popped in my head. It’s very funny where comic book movies are going. You’ve got Marvel, which is attempting to establish a continuity between their upcoming movies (Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America will all come together in a planned Avengers movie by 2011). There’s also the upcoming X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie, and the inevitable Spider-Man 4, not to mention a slew of other random stuff that’s coming out. We’ve already seen multiple interpretations of the same character within a very short period of time (see Hulk/Incredible Hulk and the two Punisher movies).

Could it be that movies are where comics were in the mid 80s? A medium ready for massive reinvention? Does it really make sense to make a revisionist comic book movie already?

Incredibly, I think that might be the case. This summer has been a flood of comic book adaptations. Iron Man, Hellboy, The Dark Knight, Wanted…even Indiana Jones was in the same style. Even if they market it as yet another comic movie, Watchmen isn’t one (provided they stick to the source material, and I’m reasonably confident they will).

So what could possibly come next? The Dark Knight Returns? Miracleman? Swamp Thing? Rising Stars? God help us all, Brat Pack? Will movies somehow get past the revisionist phase and get to some kind of instant nostalgia era so that we end up with a movie adaptation of Marvels or Astro City?

I don’t know where this is all going. I do know that as my shelves look less like a collection of my favorite graphic novels and more like a list of hollywood blockbusters, my world gets a little more surreal.

WARNING: This post violates the rules.

A quick shameless plug: I’ll be appearing on PolyCast, the official Apolyton podcast in the near future. If you’d like to ask me a question about CivRevolution, they’ve put out an official call for questions.

Should be fun!

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My travel show of choice at the moment is Dexter, the delightfully dark Showtime series about a cop-slash-serial killer. I love it (enough so that I’m reading the book it’s based on), but there’s something really funny going on with Jennifer Carpenter, the actress playing Dexter’s sister Debra. It was driving me crazy as I watched the whole first season over my last few trips, but I finally stumbled on it…aside from the hair color, she looks exactly Daphne from Scooby Doo. Don’t believe me? Take a look:

Okay, maybe I’m crazy. I’m willing to accept that. But if you watch the show, just think about it. There’s something in her eyes that reminds me of Daphne. It’s uncanny. And for the record, lest anyone assume that I’m insulting Ms. Carpenter by comparing her to a crudely drawn cartoon icon, I’d point out that I think Daphne is hot. Always have, always will.

So there.