Very Little Excuse for a Post This Week

Johnny Depp is apparently now not playing the Riddler. Which I predicted a few posts ago.
Somebody sat down with Michael Caine and had an interview and basically debunked all those rumors he started after the last batman ended.

Meanwhile Jackie Earl Haley *is* playing Freddie Krueger. Prepare yourself for a rarity, because for once, Hollywood has backed into agreeing with me, albeit most likely accidentally. Even a broken clock is right twice a day and all that jazz. See, there's a lot of complaining going on that Freddie doesn't do funny in this movie and it's all dark and scary and taken too seriously. And I say, huzzah. Finally. One of the things I've always hated about Elm St. Movies is the stupid cheezy dialog (which for the record is almost completely absent from the original movie, which is dark and scary and...well, good.) So, I say bravo. I'd much rather have a scary Freddie than a bizarrely punny Freddie, and I think Haley was a good casting choice. Of course, just to make things sacrosanct in the universe and to annoy the living *#!? out of me they'll make 9 sequels to this dark scary Freddie filled with bad puns.

Not Safe for work language in this video about cell phones in horror movies.

You want bizarre? How bout a museum full of stuffed gophers. That good enough?

Enjoy Cube Colossus if you can. Too much talky for me. Though I kind of like the weird control scheme.

There's another game here called Thunder Attack, that's supposed to be good, but so far I haven't found a browser on any of my machines that has the right plugin for it. Can anyone see it? Maybe it's a hoax. "Haha, remember that time we pretended to make an awesome game and there really wasn't a game? Good times, good times."

William and Sly. I can't even tell you how much I like this. It's pretty, has great sound and music (I leave it on while I work because it's like great white noise) and it's just kind of neat to cruise around and explore.

Things that happened over the weekend.

Let's see, I moved all the computers around, including swapping hard drives for 3 hours so I could get my Mac back, and ostensibly so I could give Allie the good machine to play WOW on. Really it was to get the Mac back. Going from a 17" monitor to a 21" monitor...my eyes still haven't readjusted to the awesome.

Note, also, that if you have a monitor with a DVI-D and a D-Sub plug, and you have a DVI-D and a D-Sub wire, and the computer has only a DVI-D plug on it, don't use the D-Sub wire with a DVI-D adaptor on it. It just make things look fuzzy, right up until the point where you realize you're an idiot and you plug the DVI-D wire in and things go back to normal. Just saying.

Saw Jennifer's Body with the kids. Funnier than I thought it would be. Actually didn't annoy me. And I don't really care for Megan Fox that much, so seeing her as a bad guy was all right with me. Not sure how that worked out. Definitely rental material, or maybe dollar theater.

I'm gonna do a little different format for the links here, just bear with me.

The Beatles Rock Band Intro - Looks awesome. I would totally watch a movie or a cartoon done in this style, especially if it was about the Beatles. Does the game have any of this in it, or is it just the intro? I assumed it was just Rock Band with Beatles songs. Is that not true?

Ingrlorious Basterdz Villain - This guy is awesome. He was great in Inglorious Basterdz and now he is going to be a villain in the Green Hornet movie with Seth Rogen. He should be a villain in the Green Lantern movie (which we discussed last week may or may not get made). Wouldn't he be a great Sinestro?

Pictures of the Green Hornet movie - With Seth Rogen. Yep, it's apparently shooting. Enjoy the pics and then wonder if it will be awesome or terrible. I kind of like Seth Rogen, but this seems like it might be fail. Maybe Green Hornet is just one of those properties that you can't make a serious, dark movie out of like Batman, or maybe this is just a bad idea. I'll wait for a trailer to make a decision. Maybe the dude up above will make it awesome.

My new favorite trailer mashup - Just full of win. Dark Knight vs. Toy Story.

Ridiculous Japanese Game Plot - This game might or might not be about porn. I have no idea. It's just ludicrous though.

Scariest Movie ever? - Supposedly. This is what they're saying. Everyone seems to think it's awesome. I'll have to check it out.

Gentlemen Broncos - Seriously funny. Like Sam Rockwell, like the guy who plays the writer (from the fabulous Flight of the Conchords). Looks great.

Robots shoot Pool - Slowly. But still cool.

Guitar Hero for the C64 - Now this is funny. That's totally what it would have looked like too.

Hotel made out of hotel key cards? - Strange. Very strange.

Football Season Begins. I write blog post.

Yay, football. I watched a lot of it today.

Also, I started this post on Wednesday I think, so check when it's posted, because right now I'm about to post it and it's Sunday night. (EDIT: I started it on Tuesday. So apparently Blogspot just takes whatever day I start editing a post and marks that as the day it was posted. Fantastic. I could make it look like I posted every day. I'll just start a post every day and...who am I kidding, I'm too lazy to even do that.)

Ok, we good? All right then, let's get started.

Some kind of parkour game here. You're running on building ledges, jumping over things, through windows occasionally...I don't know. It's kind of addictive. But it will give you a headache. The screen shakes a lot. I mean like your monitor is stuck in one of those things they have at Home Depot that shakes the paint cans up. It's kind of annoying. And it seems to never end. But I click on it and play it again occasionally...

Super ultra violent video. Starring 12" GI Joe figures. Kinda creepy. I think it's the unchanging expressions on their faces. Bizarre and fun.

Holy Kri-zolie! Solomon Kane Trailer! Somewhere in the recesses of my mind I heard this movie was being made but I had little hope for it because...well, lots of reasons. First of all you may or may not know who Solomon Kane is. Well, he was created by Robert E. Howard, who had a much more famous character, that got not one, but two movies (the second of which is, how shall I put this, not good. I mean it's fun in a cheesy way, but really, just kind of crap, as Eddie would say.) So I thought, Oh, it'll be terrible and they'll screw the character all up and I can rant about it later if anyone ever notices the movie's existence, but here, now, they've gone and intrigued me. That trailer looks, um, decent. Like I really want to see that. I love Solomon Kane. He's awesome. (Hint, hint, someone buy me a book for Christmas).

More Awesome HERE! That's the trailer for the movie Plan 9. That's the remake of the Ed Wood Classic, Plan 9 From Outer Space. How cool is that? Plus the original was delivered in 1959, so this is like the 50th anniversary celebration. Nicely done. See, I view this differently than the knuckleheads trying to remake The Birds, because here's the thing: both movies are classics, but they're classics for different reasons. The Birds is like Steak and Potatoes. It just goes together well. Plan 9 From Outer Space is like Ketchup on Eggs. Some people really love it, but most people just kind of go, "huh" and then eye you bemusedly while you eat it, tolerating without hate, it's just kind of a weird thing that's there. So, I think the remake of Plan 9 will be like Salsa on Eggs, cause it's a little updated, and now a lot more people are like, "oh, that sounds good." So, yeah. There. The Plan 9 remake is like salsa on eggs. Bow down before my mad simile-constructing skills.

It's awesome movie week here at Madtoad Enterprises, apparently, so yeah, I'm gonna throw a little Black Dynamite your way. (Thanks Travis). Yes that's a real movie. Yes it's coming out soon. Yes they're serious. (That's acutally Michael Jai White playing Black Dynamite. I love that guy. First he was Tyson in Tyson, then he played Spawn, and then he kind of disappeared. But I've always thought he was a good actor. And in the last few years he was the voice of Green Lantern in the incredibly awesome Justice League cartoon, and then he had a nice cameo in what should have been the Oscar Winner for Best Picture Last Year, and now he's going to be in this and in Robert Rodriguez's Predators, coming next year, so I'm kind of stoked. By the way, he's credited as a writer on this movie). By the way, how lame is it that in the movie TYSON the guy playing TYSON got 3rd billing? That's kinda messed up.

Thanks to B-Fish for the following: Cat can't figure out how to get a drink. Kitty has a drinking problem.

Laborious Posting

It was all you could do to think that I'd use the fact that it's labor day as an excuse to not post today, effectively killing my monday posting ritual that has been going for an astounding, what, 5 weeks? 4? I don't even know. Travis, how many weeks in a row is this?

See, it didn't happen. I posted anyway. So bleh.

Clearly Hollywood will pay for any script that allows random B-list actors to shoot at each other for whatever the heck reason they can think of. Can you imagine this? All the world's greatest assassins get together to battle for 10 Million dollars in some random sleepy town? I'll probably watch it though. See, this is how they get me.

Disney buys Marvel. Can't wait for the Micky Mouse, Spiderman crossover comics.

Adopt-A-Dog segment goes horribly awry.

A brief primer on dimensions, up to the 10th. Apparently this has been floating around the internets for a while, but I had never seen it.

For those of you who love fast food, here are 10 secret menu items you can get at, perhaps, one of your favorite places. Mental Floss, by the way, is one of those pages I can get lost on pretty easily for hours.

How to destroy the Earth. You know. If you need that kind of information for any reason.

First Citiwide Bank. How do you make money?

So A-Team casting news is apparently being scooped by the MMA now, since this guy was apparently going to fight this guy (I don't know any of these guys. The only MMA person I know is Kimbo Slice and that's only because his name is Kimbo Slice. I don't even know if he's good.) But now, instead of those two guys fighting those two guys are going to NOT fight so that that first guy can play B.A. in the A-Team movie.

Um. Ok. Sure.

That IMDB link for A-Team is another place where I should point out that they have ludicrous and conflicting information all on one page. According to that page both Common and the Game (both rappers, incidentally) are playing B.A. in the A-Team movie. Clearly that's not true. Unless both of them and the MMA guy are all gonna play B.A. at different parts of the movie. Maybe they play him at different ages or something, or maybe the plot involves B.A. having his brain transplanted into different bodies. Come to think of it, I'd watch that too.

Battle for the Ages.

THERE have been many great battles in our time. Ali vs. Frazier. Larry Bird vs. Dominique Wilkins in the 1988 Eastern Conference Finals. LL Cool J vs. Kool Moe Dee. Alien vs. Predator. But these can not prepare you for the incredible battle that takes place during Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. Oh yes, I watched it.

Listen, I'm not talking about the battle between a badly rendered octopus and a shark so puppety it makes the cast of Thunderbirds look downright realistic. Oh no. I'm talking about the battle between the cast of this movie to one-up each other in the championship for the worst acted movie in the history of mankind. I don't know how they did it. I'm not sure how they kept it up. From the minute the movie started it was like a tour de force of forced dialog, strange looks into the distance, and unbelievably awkward romance.

First of all, it opens with a helicopter pilot doing something bad, and here it almost lost me. I was close to just abandoning the whole thing, because this guy was so terrible that I couldn't bear to watch him try to pretend he was really talking to Naval HQ over the radio (who at one point reminded him, over the radio mind you, that this mission was so top secret that if anything should go wrong the government would disavow all knowledge of him).

But then Deborah Gibson showed up. Yes, that Debbie Gibson. And thus I discovered that our friendly helicopter pilot was only preparing me for a battle for the ages. A masterpiece. Actors so wooden you'd think they were carved from trees. It is delicious. From the overbearing boss who fires Debbie in one of the most awkward "I'm supposed to be unlikable" scenes in recent history to the Naval commander who actually says the phrase "When we find the beast, we're sending him to hell!" to the Irish professor whose accent is so random that the script had to constantly remind me he was from Ireland. (And it did.)

There's an incredibly awkward romance between Deborah and the Japanese scientist. There's a painful bunch of extras who are supposed to be military security (who wear their sunglasses even when they're guarding people in a dark room). There's even a submarine commander who's accused by his pilot of being INSANE! But then, along comes Lorenzo Lamas and he reminds us that there will never be any actor so bad with so much work to his name for a reason. The man is amazing. I don't know how he does it. It must be seen to be believed. I'm not even sure what he's supposed to be doing in the movie. Who is he? He appears to be in charge of the military (sometimes) but he's wearing a cheap black suit, sporting a pony tail, and never really seems to tell us who he is. He's generic government boss guy. But he's oh so jerky. He makes racist comments. He makes bad puns. He yells at people over a radio. He calls the Mega Shark "Sharkzilla" for God's sake. It is un-be-liev-able.

And this doesn't even take into account that the movie has, and please, I don't want to oversell this, it has THE GREATEST SCENE EVER PUT TO FILM. When the airline passenger looks out the window and says...no. You HAVE to see this to believe it. You'll know when it happens, and hopefully you'll laugh as hard as I laughed and for so long I was afraid I was going to wake up everyone in the house. It was outstanding. Ok. I'm gonna move on to more stuff.

I like to do some game industry related stuff since I'm, you know, related to the game industry, so I sort of look around for anything game related that is cool enough to post. So, there's this, a documentary called Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball. Basically the pinball industry has become the video slot machine industry, and these guys were told to revolutionize pinball or they'd be fired, and they did, and then they got fired anyway. It's totally worth watching the trailer for some cool shots of the machine they put together.

So, last week I said the Avatar movie looked "meh" and then made a joke about getting sued by them for that. Well, now someone's suing them. You may not have heard of Delgo (God be with you if you have, or if you've seen it). At the risk of my immortal soul I'm going to put the trailer to it right......here. Careful with it. It will hurt you. But now there's this Delgo vs. Avatar lawsuit going on. Because apparently the people that made Delgo thought that maybe James Cameron ripped off their movie. Um...good luck winning that one. Delgo, by the way, is apparently the Floppiest Flop that ever Flopped. Good read.

Is this a viral trailer for Cloverfield 2? Topless Robot thinks it is, and it is exactly the sort of wacky, low budget viral stuff they put on the web for the original Cloverfield. I'm not buying it yet, but, who knows.

So apparently there are buckets of DC Movies in the works, including a Flash movie, a Bizarro Superman movie, 2 Green Arrow movies, and Shazam, which was supposed to have this guy as a bad guy (playing this guy, which we may have noted before here on the madtoad page). Now, some of this is intriguing to me for different reasons.

The Bizarro movie is apparently being put together by the guys who did Galaxy Quest, so that could be incredibly watchable.

The Flash movie reminds me that at one point in time Ryan Reynolds (who was going to be Deadpool for Marvel, but apparently dumped them to become the new Green Lantern for DC) claimed he loved the Flash (one of his favorite characters ever) and that he was interested in the role. Then...nothing happened, and suddenly he was Deadpool.

One of the Green arrow movies is Supermax, which is an idea I love (which I'm pretty sure we also discussed here before) and there was talk of this guy playing Oliver Queen which is a great idea as far as I'm concerned. But would you do two Green Arrow movies at the same time? What's the other one about? Who would be in it? What story would it tell? Intriguing.

Also, I don't think that Shazam movie is going to be worth the trouble. The problem really is with the concept. See Billy Batson is a little kid who turns into Shazam. Which means, that by default it would have to be a kid's movie. They wouldn't do dark Superman Returns or Batman Begins stuff with a little kid would they? That would be kind of creepy. Though given The Rock's predilection for making kid's movies, maybe that would all work out in the end? Who knows?

But DC is having all kinds of movie trouble. And not just Nolan not being ready to work on Batman 3. Did you know there was a Justice League movie in development and it got canned, partially because of trouble with Australia's economy? That's weird right, but here's the best part. Apparently DC didn't learn their lesson because now Green Lantern is having the same problem! (That link includes what I believe is a photoshopped Ryan Reynolds in a Green Lantern outfit. Outstanding.) And just because I don't think I've mentioned it before, the GL movie is being directed by Martin Campbell. If you don't know who that is, just know that he directed the (awesome) Casino Royale.

See, this is what happens, I go looking for something like Campbell up there to give you guys a nice link and I end up discovering things like Martin Campbell is remaking The Birds. Then I start clicking links and it looks like he's NOT remaking it. Or that the studio pulled the plug, or back burnered it or something (so that link to the movie is just outdated and those things never go away). But then I read that they're remaking Rosemary's Baby (trailer) and that one still seems to be going strong. See, I just get sucked into these things and then it's six hours later and I'm reading the internet and Allison's like "What are you doing?" And I'm like "I don't know..."

So then I was reading about these dudes making both The Birds (which they're not doing now because they can't think of anything cool that birds do, which was strike one, and watch Alfred's movie, I mean it's a masterpiece, the birds don't have to do anything, they just sit around and look creepy and then attack people in big swarms and...forget it. You're clearly not getting it. Hitchcock knew how to make a movie. You two guys...) and Rosemary's Baby (you forgot I paranthesised that sentence up there didn't you? I went on for a while there. Like I'm doing again here. And on top of that I made up a word) which they're being defensive about in that article because someone was saying "don't remake it" and they start lambasting that person by saying "We have this other script that isn't like that movie". Then why call it that? Then they're like "We changed the name to The Sacrifice." Great. Stop calling it the Rosemary's Baby remake then, and don't get so uppity. Chill.

Meanwhile, this is what Chris Nolan is doing: Inception. Again, looks intriguing, but I have no idea what it's about.

So, yeah, there's that.

Then, I thought, all I seem to do is complain about superhero movies and things, so I thought I'd give you a couple of trailers for moies that I am actually looking forward to.

Cemetery Junction as Travis pointed out when he sent me this link (thanks Travis!) this is how a teaser trailer should be done. Doesn't show a single frame of the movie, but I was laughing through most of it and would go watch it based on this alone.

And The Men Who Stare At Goats. That's a bizarre title right? What if I told you Ewan McGregor was in it? Does that pique your interest? How bout if I said Jeff Bridges was in it? Those 2 are nerd poster boys what with one being young Obi-Wan and one being Flynn from Tron. Ok, how bout if I give you Keyser Soze as well? Yeah, he's in it. Oh. And some dude named George. But you know, whatever. This guy's in it, so it's a must see. (And I didn't even mention that the T-1000 and possibly D.B. Cooper were in it). It's like somebody let me cast a movie.

Tuesday is the new Monday.

I don't know what happened there, I was all rolling on Monday posts and now I'm on Tuesdays. It's like days of the week have no meaning for me anymore. Weird right?

I feel that it's my solemn duty as a game developer to bring you information about games, at least every once in a while, so I throw up trailers to games or game website occasionally (as you may have noticed). However, since the recent problems with blog lawsuits and people actually going to court for saying "bad" things about people or products, I'm not going to tell you that I think this trailer looks ridiculous. That might get me in trouble. I'm just going to post this and make a couple of comments. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is a new PSP game being released soonish. Now, this is not to say anything bad about it, I'm just pointing out that those 5 words don't go together. It's like somebody has a random English word generator and picked out 5 random words. If Metal Gear Solid wasn't already a license you could look at it and say "Those words don't go together." I mean, really, what do they mean? This is in addition to the "fact" that Metal Gear Solid 2 (Which had a 95% rating from the critics, so, that's good) has quite possibly the most convoluted story line ever written by human beings. It makes War & Peace look like the 3 bears. I mean seriously, just go to that page and try to comprehend the plot. Again, not saying anything bad you lawsuit happy lawyers, just saying, there it is.

What happens when some nerdy mathematicians get together and start discussing things like, say a zombie apocalypse? Well then you get a thoroughly detailed Mathematical analysis of a zombie apocalypse. That's what happens.

James Cameron's Avatar trailer. Not Avatar the Last Airbender. This is the other Avatar movie. It looks....meh. I can't even, I mean, it just...What happened to the dude that made Aliens? And The Abyss? And Terminator? And Terminator 2? And True Lies? And Piranha Part 2: The Spawning? (By the way, possibly the best flying piranha movie ever made). Did the giant piles of money from Titanic make Cameron crazy? I'm going to get sued for that. But I believe, from this trailer, that the (POTENTIAL SPOILERS * WATCH TRAILER BEFORE READING) dude in the wheel chair is scientifically placed in the body of the big blue elf in an effort to spy on the big blue elves so the space marines can attack them, but then he falls in love with big blue elf girl and he doesn't want to betray the big blue elf people and then everybody learns a valuable lesson. That's just my guess, and to be honest, that doesn't sound particularly interesting to me. Maybe it's just me. I'm sure it will be beautiful.

On the other hand, the trailer is up for Venture Bros. Season 4. Man, that show just is so awesome I can't even handle how awesome it is. I need to rewatch the first 3 seasons before it starts just to get myself prepared for it.

How bout a list of the 10 Most Expensive Cars in the world? Tim will be happy to note that the Veyron is number one. My house costs less than, well, all of these cars.

Which means I'll need to buy one of the 10 Least Expensive Cars in America.

Then I'll need insurance. It's cheap to insure these cars. But not these.

I may have posted the shaky cam version of the Wolfman trailer prior to this, but this is the official trailer. And again I say...meh. I don't know what it is, I *like* werewolves. I really do. When I was a kid I liked werewolves more than vampires. I wrote a story outline once for an epic book I was going to write where werewolves killed vampires. But the movie just looks...I don't know. Kind of disjointed? A little dull? I think there's going to be a lot of hand wringing and guilt, and not enough cool werewolfy stuff.

Also, what's up with Anthony Hopkins? It struck me that with Benecio Del Toro as his son, this is the second time Hopkins has been, well, I don't know, sort of a Spanish father I guess? I mean, maybe in Wolfman he had a Spanish wife, which is fine. But I felt like I was seeing him in Zorro again, remember that? Where he was the old Zorro? And was a Spanish Don? And I forgot, he also played Pablo Picasso (born in Spain). He knows he was born in Wales, right? You know what's really weird? He played Othello. Um...you know, one of the central themes of Othello is that Othello's a black guy, right? I guess they decided to ignore that part. Oh, well he did it in blackface apparently. Or maybe he's just really tan. That makes it better, I guess. This appears to be par for the course for British Shakespeare. That's Laurence Olivier.

By the way, looking up Laurence Olivier actually led me to this webpage, which is right up there with the creepy.

Haha! Gotcha!

See how I tricked you there? I had you thinking I was gonna update every Monday, but then BAM! I hit you with a post on a Tuesday night. I know you were all hanging on the edge of your seats, right? Right.

Anyway, I continued to dodge the bullet that is GI Joe by having the kids go see Ponyo on Saturday. Which, by the way I believe I actually predicted a few posts ago when I put the Ponyo trailer up. It's adorable, magical, amusing, and very, very Japanese.

You know what might be even more asinine than a ridiculous remake that no one needs to do? How about a prequel to the ridiculous remake that you already made and it flopped. Apparently they're in script review for a prequel to the horrible Jason Statham remake of Death Race 2000. Don't think that I blame Statham for that. I love the dude, he does great action flicks, but the new Death Race was "meh" at its best and "why am I here?" at its worst.

And while Statham will hopefully not be involved the sexy sci-fi siren Milla Jovovich (who apparently can't get enough of Resident Evil movies) is doing something called "The Fourth Kind". In case you're wondering what that title means, check out this and refresh your memory. (That trailer's kinda creepy, no?)

Did I mention the USFL is coming back apparently?

I can't tell what's more awesome here, either the Patrick Warburton voice-overs or the actual burgers themselves.

Allie read this book and liked it and now it's a movie. Directed by that dude that did Lord of the Rings. By the way, he also produced District 9, which I have to say was extremely fantastic. It's depressing that Transforminators (They're eating all our sand!) will make 10x more money than it will.

This might be the creepiest thing ever.

First of all, the headline on this next link, taken out of context, just evokes giggles in me. Secondly, wanna see a building do a flip? Of course you do.

Oh look, the entire alphabet.

15 different ways to tie your shoes. Or something. I have no idea why these things fascinate me.

So apparently, Nicholls State University's old mascot (they're called the Colonels) was racist. Or something. You can see him here in this article. So they decided to update it. This is what they came up with. Apparently now he's a communist video game boss from the late 80's. What's most amusing about this is how hard it is to actually find a picture of the old mascot (a google image search turned up almost nothing for 5 pages). Or perhaps it's the fact that there are dozens of articles about this controversy, but most of them don't show any comparison of the two mascots. This one, for example, shows neither the old nor the new mascot (though it does show the guy the actual mascot was based on). What ever happened to journalism?

Probably the same thing that's happening to the movie industry. Shamelessly stolen from a Travis email: Sometimes Hollywood forgets they already made a movie.