A Classic Case of Sequelitis

“Sequelitis - A medical condition propagated by a combination of commercial success and creative ineptitude. Symptoms include bad movies and music, arrogance, denial, and desperation. In that order.” – Urban Dictionary

Ahh…sequels. We love them (sort of). We hate them (sort of). We love to hate them (when we don’t have anything better to do).

Some sequels mean well. They’re rightly born of the original intellectual property, crafted by the original creator, and closely linked to their source. Fans accept them into canon. They create wikis to explain the connections between installments. Good times are had by all.

Some sequels are evil. They’re cash grabs, products of creative bankruptcy and fiscal trepidation. They cause fans to hate they things they once adored or, at the very least, enter into blissful ignorance of a given franchise. Good times are had by no one.

I’m sure you can think of examples of both. Star Wars has entries in each category – Final Fantasy, too. If I knew more about the Harry Potter series, I’d mention those as well.

With The Hangover II boring many critics and sequels starring pirates and giant robots dominating the summer lineup, it’s easy to think that all sequels are disingenuous hackjobs. But some do deliver on the promise of their forbearers – for every three movies starring Big Momma, there’s one The Dark Knight.

Sequelitis the disease is not confined to movies and videogames. And it’s worse when the original authors aren’t even involved. Plenty of books, television shows, and other properties fall prey to it – even plays! Especially the classics.

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Sunday Reading: I Was a Star Wars Fan

Most of us saw The Phantom Menace and left adequately entertained, blindly excited that Star Wars was back in our lives. We saw Attack of the Clones and tried our best to convince ourselves it was cool because of chibi Boba Fett and Oh Man When Yoda Did That Thing! Then Revenge of the Sith happened. George Lucas had caused a great disturbance in the Force, as if a million fans suddenly cried “Nooooo!” and were suddenly silenced.

Except they weren’t silenced. For years, Star Wars fans (myself included) have decried the prequels and Lucas’s other perversions of canon. We’ve all gone through – or are still going through – The Five Stages of Star Wars Fandom Grief.

In his article for Slate “A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away…I Was a Star Wars Fan,” Will Carlough outlines the five stages, as well as his journey through them. His description for Stage Four is my favorite:

“The fourth stage, depression, is pretty easy to picture when you think of a 30-year-old man watching 150 episodes of Pokémon.”

You can track the evolution of Carlough’s fandom by looking at its start and end points. He went from making his own award-winning fan film about Grand Moff Tarkin (just knowing who that is requires an above-average nerd quotient) to basically ignoring the 2008 animated feature The Clone Wars.

Such is the story for many a Star Wars fan. If Lucas keeps making movies, we’re going to need support groups.

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Saturday Morning TV: The Worst Videogame Voice Acting Brought to Face-Acting Life

I don’t know what’s more awkward: the voice-acting or this guy’s super expressive face.

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A Decade of Dreck #52: Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Movie

Charge Shot!!! is celebrating the end of the decade in the most masochistic way we know how - by watching and writing about the 100 worst movies of the last ten years as defined by film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Click here to see RT's complete list, click here for more information about the Decade of Dreck project, and click here to see all of the movies we've done so far.

I played trading card games in the younger days. Kid Boivin can confess to an out-and-out mastery of Magic: The Gathering, the Star Wars CCG, and Pokémon. Going along with these three games was what I suppose separated them from the standard card games of Poker, Blackjack, and the like: a story. Magic had it's players play the role of dueling wizards ("planeswalkers") and had it's post-Tolkien fantasy story played out through the art and "flavor text" of the cards; each expansion set was an advancement of the story with an accompanying novel, many of which I read. Star Wars and Pokémon of course were both based on pre-existing properties, allowing players to re-enact the events of their favorite stories how they saw fit ("I'm going to train Lando as a Jedi...a dark Jedi!").

I, of course, loved Star Wars to death and watched a whole lot of the Pokémon cartoon as well. So basically, I'm well versed in the sometimes goofy realm of the kids' card game cash-in. I was, however, not prepared for Yu-Gi-Oh!.

My brothers watched Yu-Gi-Oh! after I had outgrown the card game fad and when I was probably older than the anime's target audience so my memories of it consist of the weekly bellows of "BLUE EYES WHITE DRAGON!" emanating from my living room on Saturday mornings. I was expecting a simple tween-centered movie for the show's cinematic debut; I have nostalgia for Pokémon after all, maybe this would register with me in a way it didn't connect with the critics.

Wrong. So very, very wrong.

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The Huffington Post Lawsuits: No Heroes Here, Only Villains

Earlier this year, AOL purchased the Huffington Post for $315 million dollars, virtually guaranteeing the site's place among the corporate news pantheon of the Internet, as well as unleashing a lot of hurt feelings and people looking to cash in on this deal. The latest exhibit in the latter category is Jonathan Tasini, an unpaid freelance blogger for the Huffington Post who filed a class action lawsuit against the publication on Tuesday, asking for a third of the money from the AOL deal to go to these bloggers who post to the site. 

Let's get this straight - no one aspires to become a writer, let alone a blogger, for the money. Tasini himself had been blogging for the Huffington Post since its infancy in 2001, and many others have voluntarily elected to do what he does. Unpaid blogging can be done for any number of reasons - padding for the resume, experience in the field, a way to increase one's readership, a forum to voice one's opinions, or (in my case) a hobby and creative outlet. Tasini knew from the start that he would not be getting paid for his work and, as his decade-long connection to the Huffington Post demonstrates, he must have been okay with this. 

It is unlikely that Tasini is going to walk away with any money, let alone a third of the profit from the Post's sale. And Tasini himself understands that; he acknowledges that he is not suing because of a breach of contract. In fact, it's sort of unclear what Tasini's actual argument is, besides the fact that its unfair that Arianna Huffington walks away with so much money on the backs of her unpaid writers. What is his game plan here? Does he have a strategy?

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We're as Sad as Hell and We're Not Gonna Take This Anymore! - R.I.P. Sidney Lumet

By now any of you out there with any sort of connection to the wider world will have heard the news that legendary director Sidney Lumet passed away this weekend at the age of 86. He leaves behind one of the most solid and astonishing filmographies of any Hollywood director in the past half decade. 12 Angry Men, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, The Verdict, the list goes on. Lumet established himself as one of the best directors for confronting capital i Issues through the use of cinema. And yet he never won an Oscar (except for a lifetime achievement award from the Academy a couple years ago, which is nice I suppose).

By far the most iconic and oft-referenced of Lumet's movies is 1976's television satire Network. Owing much to Peter Finch's famous-for-a-reason "Mad as hell" speech, you see this one get brought out every couple years or so at Oscar montages, and like I said, it's famous for a reason: it's so damn good.

Network is centered around the story of Howard Beale, the primetime news anchor at "UBS" the lowest-rated network in the country. When he receives the word that he's been fired, he suffers what seems to be a nervous breakdown; or is it a prophet's revelation?

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Bonus Saturday Morning TV: The Governator

Questionable celebrity decisions abound!

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Saturday Morning TV: What Should Brett Favre Do?

What should I do? Should I watch this video again? Should I watch the original Lebron James ad? Maybe I should just hop on Google…

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Surprise! Duke Nukem Forever Delayed

As if the whole “Slap the Babe” multiplayer nonsense weren’t enough, Gearbox Studios has announced a delay for its forthcoming revival of the previously unshippable Duke Nukem Forever.

Duke Nukem Forever – the albatross that miniaturized 3D Realms with a shrink ray, ate it, then pooped it into an interactive digital toilet – was picked up by Gearbox in September of last year. CEO Randy Pitchford seemed like the midwife to finally bring this beast into the world, given his love for and attachment to the franchise.

It seems that Duke, like some sort of stubborn womb-loving infant, will not be born without a fight. Pitchford announced today, with some modicum of humor (see below), that Duke Nukem Forever will miss its May 3 release date and arrive in the States on June 14.

I’ll believe it when I see it.

If I see it.

[via VG Tribune]

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The AT&T/T-Mobile Buyout: Whoever Wins, We Lose

Nestled in between New York Times headlines about Libya and Japan (Donate!) this weekend, so small you'd almost miss it, was an unrelated story: AT&T announced its intentions to buy T-Mobile for an estimated $39 billion.

This buyout, if it gets past government regulators, would make AT&T the country's largest wireless provider by a fair margin, and would shrink the number of companies with serious national coverage to just three: AT&T, Verizon, and an increasingly tiny-looking Sprint. Most other wireless providers are regional at best, and they're so far outgunned by the larger companies that they can't hope to compete on the national stage.

I've got plenty of opinions on both Libya and Japan, but as we're not a "new millennium humanitarian crisis" blog, I'll have to content myself with writing about the lesser of these three stories.

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Saturday Morning TV: Rebecca Black’s “Friday”

Because I have NO qualms guiding your eyes to a flaming car wreck…

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The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Media Responses to the Japan Earthquake

It’s been difficult to sift through all of the news coming out of Japan, especially as more news arrives every minute. Conflict reports on nuclear facilities are nonetheless troubling. Videos of the wreckage and photos of struggling survivors take your breath away.

Now scientists are saying the 8.9 magnitude quake moved Eastern Japan moved Japan 13 feet closer to the United States and shortened Earth’s day by about 1.6 microseconds. That doesn’t even sound like it should be possible, let alone something that massive quakes have done before.

Even tougher to follow has been the rush of news in the tech and entertainment world as companies react to crisis. A lot of trivial, some of it heartwarming, the Internet’s been abuzz with news of everything from cancellations to missing persons reports.

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Saturday Morning TV: Rocko’s Modern BJ

In response to yesterday’s post on Nickelodeon, Giaco shared this with the staff. Everything’s kosher until Heffer gets starry-eyed and starts grinning like a satisfied co-ed. This was shown on daytime television to children, people!

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Charlie Sheen: Vatican Assassin Warlock

Two nights ago, we saw a lavish celebration of the best and brightest movies from 2010. Stars were interviewed on the Red Carpet, badly timed jokes were cracked by the ceremony's younger-skewing hosts, the network's five second tape delay came in handy during Melissa Leo's Best Supporting Actress acceptance speech, and gold statuettes were handed out to some of Hollywood's most deserving artists/entertainers. But one significant figure in the entertainment industry was nowhere to be found during the proceedings: Charlie Sheen.

Despite his absence (court-ordered or otherwise), Sheen's presence could be felt in two instances throughout the night: once when a drag-clad James Franco cracked a passing joke, and once when a promo for Sheen's upcoming interviews with Good Morning America and 20/20 aired during the telecast. Gee, given his recent epic BIFF on a radio interview with Alex Jones - leading directly into the announcement that Two and a Half Men is no longer a viable television program - you'd think he would stay away from public exposure for a while. But prudence was clearly never the Sheen way...

Selections from said epic BIFF can be found in this article - I wanted to give it its own paragraph, lets it get lost in the shuffle. You can find the full audio here. It really is some pretty amazing stuff. I don't know where he found the inspiration for such powerful vitriolic rants (my first guess would be the drugs he was taking, and my second guess would be a reaction from quitting said drugs cold turkey), but I think he could be on to something, both in style and in substance.

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Saturday Morning TV: Harry Baals

Need I say more?*

*I could have also said “HARry IndiANa Harry IndiANa Harry INdiANa Harry InDIana.”

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Saturday Morning TV: What is the Internet?

A few years ago (17, in fact), Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel didn’t quite understand what the Internet was. A week or two ago, an NBC employee disseminated footage of this humorous misunderstanding on said Internet. A day or two ago, that same employee claims NBC fired him for doing so. Awesome.

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There's Nothing Common About It...

We've all felt it: runny nose, itchy throat, the feeling of stuffy congestion in the head. Maybe you'll start sneezing or coughing. It's the onset of the common cold, an illness that will affect each adult in America 2-4 times every year on average (every child 6-10 times). These are some symptoms listed on the Wikipedia entry on the common cold, along with muscle aches, fatigue, malaise, headache, weakness, and loss of appetite. Now, is it me, or does it seem that one of these things is not like the other ones?

The common cold is a viral infection that affects the upper respiratory tract. And for the most part the symptoms on this list of have a physiological bent to them. Except for this this "malaise" right in the middle, which doesn't really correspond to anything specifically medical. Sure, it has a classification in the ICD, but what is it really related to?. And I know that ailments of the body can affect how the mind works. And I'm all for vague and general descriptions, especially for something that can be manifested by over 200 distinct varieties of virus. But "a feeling of general discomfort or uneasiness" isn't really a symptom, it's a feeling.

That's not to say I don't have this feeling. And it's also not to say that it's not due to the common cold that I'm currently experiencing that I feel this feeling. And this feeling is expressing itself in me through endlessly obsessing over a single term in a Wikipedia article. And also through staring at the computer screen wishing that I was sitting by a roaring fire, wrapped in a blanket, with a mug of hot cocoa... and maybe some Arkham Asylum.

It's also this feeling that has caused me to write this brief excuse of an excuse-post well in advance of my regular posting time, then proceed to stare at my computer for hours on end and yet forget to hit the post button. The mind is a powerful thing - until it gets laid waste by a common illness. I'll see you next week, health-permitting. Continue...

'Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark' Reviewed or "Turn it off! Turn it off! TURN IT OFF! *sobs*"

As was the case with my parents' last visit to my New York abode, my father decided to spring for a Broadway show when they came to town two weeks ago. This time around, on Christmas Day 2010, he opted to secure tickets to a preview performance of the already infamous Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark. For those of you who don't have subscriptions to Playbill (or you know, read the Internet) Spider-Man is currently on track to being the most expensive show ever to (dis)grace the Great White Way, with costs rivaling those of a summer blockbuster. More than that, technical problems and a shocking number of near-death experiences on the part of the cast  have delayed the production by over a year. Yes, I saw that show.

As you may or may not have been noticed, I am a lifelong Spider-Fan (I self-identify with that term). Spider-Man was, depending on the sources you consult, my first favorite superhero (largely varying on whether or not one counts Jun Fukuda-era Godzilla as a "superhero"). Spider-Man helped inspire my love of science fiction and served as a moral compass on my impressionable youthful psyche. My love of the character continues to the present day, being nurtured by the (first two entries of the) recent film series and a slavish devotion to the comics.

In addition, I was a theater kid in high school. I loved the spring musical, even if my particular vocal talents had yet to develop and I was usually relegated to non-singing roles (my greatest part played was the Constable in Fiddler on the Roof). My stage years nurtured in me a healthy appreciation for showtunes and admiration for the talents and perofrmances of live theater.

So, I basically had to see this show.

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Bayonetta Review: Brainless Fun, and Also There Are Boobs

Pankin's post about Arkham Asylum yesterday convinced me that a write-up of a year-old game isn't as bad as doing a write-up of a year-old movie or something. Decent games are too plentiful for anyone to play them all when they come out, and it's likely that a lot of you got games of 2010 as presents last month and are currently working through them now, or maybe you got some gift cards and you're looking for ways to spend them.

With that in mind, I hope you can forgive my year-late review of Bayonetta, developed by Platinum Games and Nex Entertainment and published by Sega in January of last year. If you find yourself unable to forgive, let's wind the clock back and pretend this is a timely review, okay?

Bayonetta is a frenetic third-person action game in the vein of Devil May Cry or Shinobi: use comically complex button combinations to rain death and hellfire down on your enemies while avoiding said death and hellfire yourself. The best games in this genre feature addictive gameplay and smooth, precise controls, and Bayonetta is no exception.

Also on display is the genre's trademark over-the-top violence - enemies are dismembered with guns and chainsaws, slimy appendages are viciously torn from giant bosses, and blood and guts are in abundance. Bayonetta (the character) delivers all of this punishment with the expected flair (and a fair share of glib one-liners).

So far it's a very competent game, but it's a bit by the book, yes? Well, we're about to talk presentation, which is where this game distinguishes itself for better or worse.

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Saturday Morning TV: Uncomfortably Numb

This is so bad it borders on performance art.  I have trouble watching the whole thing.

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