1/31/2008 - Lord of the Rings- Peter Jackson and Ralph Bakshi Mashup

There are many movies out there that for whatever reasons did not come out the way the director intended. It's fair to say that a majority of these reasons were because of the producers limiting the budget of the film. When this happens, however, the end result is almost always unsatisfactory. And when film enthusiasts discover that these movies did not meet the directors' original vision, they demand the entire story... and in many cases, they succeed in getting their way with director's cuts or even reconstructions.

The most famous example of this was the silent movie Greed, whose original running time was over 9 hours! Of course the studio made the director cut it down, even hiring another director to cut it down more after the original director would only get it down to 4 hours. Most of the lost footage was lost permanently, however, but a "reconstruction" took place by Turner Classic Movies using still pictures and the original script.

Another more recent example is the sequel to Superman: The Movie, Superman II. Both Superman movies were shot simultaneously by Richard Donner. But when the production began running over-budget, filming stopped on Superman II in favor of Superman: The Movie. Even though it was a hit, the producers fired Richard Donner and hired another director to replace him for shooting the rest of Superman II. Needless to say, it wasn't as good as the first movie. A lot of what Richard Donner shot for II was still available, including the scenes with Marlon Brando. A huge movement was initiated on the internet for getting Warner Bros. to release a "director's cut" of Superman II with Donner's footage. And just a couple of years ago, they did... Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut was vastly superior (in my opinion) to the theatrical version and I'm glad I was one who signed the online petition.

Well, if I had my way again, I'd like to see the full version of Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings. Bakshi attempted to do what many people thought was impossible: condense the entire Lord of the Rings books into one movie. Of course without the fantastic computer animation technology we have today, he would use traditional animation along with what is called rotoscoping: an animation technique in which animators trace over live-action film. Of course, this DID prove to be impossible, as Bakshi could only cover the first two books with the budget and time he had. Peter Jackson, however, was able to get a virtual blank check to make his trilogy and it turned out to be a masterpiece. That's not to say that Bakshi's version was horribly bad... in fact, Jackson even used some elements of it for his movies. Look at how closely they match up with this mashup:

1/29/2008 - What song is this? (2 videos)

One of the highlights of Weird Al's Amish Paradise video (a parody of Coolio's Gangsta's Paradise) is towards the end where the video is being played backwards but all of Al's actions were done in reverse anyway. This has the effect of making it look like Weird Al is singing normally, but the rest of the world is moving backwards. Skip forward to the end of this video to see what it looks like:



It's obvious, though, that Weird Al is only lip-syncing backwards. While he does a very convincing job, actually singing it backwards would be very hard to do. If you'd played a voice recording of yourself backwards, the sounds you hear are very hard to mimic. And yet, that doesn't mean that people don't try. Here's somebody that did and uses it to make you guess what song he is singing:

1/28/2008 - Spider-Man : One More Day Review

If you have an ongoing comicbook series that has run for over 40 years, eventually you are going to run out of stories to tell or the storylines will tend to repeat themselves or they will just become mediocre. You may ask how that can be with only one issue coming out a month and a whole army of writers over a period of years. Well, in the case of Spider-Man comic, its popularity led to various spin-off series such as Spectacular Spider-Man, Web of Spider-Man, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Ultimate Spider-Man, etcetera, etcetera. In the course of one month, there can be as many as 4 Spider-Man issues coming out each with a different writer, but each having to maintain continuity with each other!

Over the years Peter Parker has been through it all and matured through real-life trials and crises. He's made it through high school, college, fallen in love with different women, and eventually married Mary Jane Watson. There have been many "ground-breaking" changes and revelations involving Spider-Man, such as the "true nature" of his powers, the possibility that he was just a clone, and his unmasking before the world. Each of these plot twists were met with great resistance from the readers, with much criticism that the changes to Peter were out of character. I can't blame the writers to much, because as I've stated above, it's hard to be original when writing stories that fit within a 40 year history.

I do have to side with the detractors of the current storyline, though. Most comic book fans know about Marvel's editor-in-chief Joe Quesada's distaste for the marriage between Peter and Mary Jane. He claims it limits the kind of stories that can be told about Spider-Man. So with one fell swoop, he dissolves the marriage. But how does he do it? Do they get divorced? Does Mary Jane die? No. Instead, the marriage is erased from existence because Peter makes a deal with the devil. Okay, so Peter does it to save Aunt May from death, but still... a superhero making a deal with the devil? What kind of example does that make for kids? When does a deal with the devil ever go well? Didn't they watch the Ghost Rider movie?

This development has made a lot of fans angry. And you wouldn't like it when comic book readers are angry. :) The Angry Video Game Nerd has made a living out of geeky rants about bad video games, but we all know it's just an act. If you want to see a real angry nerd, there is no better example than this review of the Spider-Man: One More Day storyline.

1/27/2008 - Star Trek Movie Mistakes Part 1

Feature films that were adapted from a TV series using the same cast have largely been successful. There's a built-in audience and fanbase for the TV shows who have watched them for free for many years. They are usually eager to see either the continuation of the storyline or just want that big-screen experience. The most recent example of this was The Simpsons Movie which did extremely well in the box-office.

One of the longest-running franchises that has had TV to movie crossovers is Star Trek. Originally intended to be a five-year or more series, the original Star Trek television show only lasted two years, but got such a huge following that it led to the production of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. While it only did respectably at the box-office, its follow-up, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was a huge hit, and brought many new fans to the series because it was such a great movie (one of my personal favorites). In fact, its success led the producers to develop a new Star Trek series on TV, Star Trek: The Next Generation. Its run on the air would be in parallel to the continuation of the stories of the old generation on the big-screen.

The writers of these stories of the big-screen and small really do make an attempt not to contradict each other in terms of continuity, but with so many storylines and throwaway technical jargon, it would have been impossible to be consistent. After all, nobody can claim to know every line of dialog to every Star Trek story or would have the time to research them while writing the plot. They would also use different writers for the feature films than the television show(s). Of course, the hardcore fans of the series would pick up on little inconsistencies between the TV shows and the movies. And in the case of Star Trek, these hardcore fans are nerds (I use that term lovingly). So what mistakes have they come up with? Well, watch and see...

1/26/2008 - Cynergy Labs: Project Maestro

It looks like somebody took Johnny Lee's idea of using the Wii remote as a finger tracking device and really running with it to create an interface that's even closer to the Minority Report experience. It looks like the difference here is adding functionality to the glove to make a left mouse-click action when you pinch two fingers together and perhaps a right-click action when you pinch three fingers together. The result is being able to do click-and-drag type operations with two mouse cursors. Of course, you're not using a mouse on a surface. You're just waving your hands around in mid-air like a conductor. Again, I don't know if this would really be practical in real life, but it's undeniably cool.

1/24/2008 - manualist plays the rocky theme

Totally unlike the theremin, where an instrument is played without touching it with the hands, this musician's instrument is ONLY his hands. How does he use them? Um, let's just say it's a technique that we all tried to do in elementary school:



I'm glad he's using his hands to make this kind of "music". I'd hate to see what would happen if you were to feed him a lot of beans.

1/23/2008 - What Alvin Really sounds like

As the Back to the Future NES video I featured before proves, it can be surprising what you can find when you slow down audio that has been artificially sped up. In the prior example, we hear the Huey Lewis song as it was meant to be heard, but in this video it's the opposite. It turns out that the voice actors from Alvin and the Chipmunks were never on helium to produce those chipmunk voices. Nor were their voices pitched up electronically. All that was done was to speed their voices up. As you can see, if you slow the audio down, you'll hear what the voice actors REALLY sound like. But I gotta warn you, it's pretty disturbing.



If you were a childhood fan of theirs, I bet this video is the equivalent of being told that Santa or the Easter Bunny isn't real. I mean, these voice actors sound like a group of middle-aged has-been barber shop quartet... or should I say triplet?

1/22/2008 - JFG Trailer

One of the biggest gaming news of last year was not really about a game at all. It was about the firing of one of the most prominent game reviewers in the industry, Gamespot's Jeff Gerstmann. Now you may say, "big deal... why would I care?" Well, rumor has it that he was fired because he gave a negative review of a game whose publisher sponsored Gamespot with advertisement, and that publisher threatened to pull advertising from the site because of the negative review.

Again you may ask, "what does it matter to me?" We rely so much now on game reviews before we buy our games. We want to know that if we spend our hard-earned money, that we will get a satisfying experience out of it. Before the internet and game magazines, we only had word of mouth. Unfortunately, if you were a risk-taker and bought games without a second opinion, you would frequently be disappointed. I certainly wish I had read an unbiased review of Ghostbusters for the NES before buying it.

And that's what makes this story so big... the firing of Gerstmann might influence other game reviewers to go easy on a game because their publisher is paying the bills of the gaming magazine/website. Reviews may no longer be unbiased and the whole game reporting industry would collapse. Now, there is no official word on why Gerstmann was fired, but the resignation of two other Gamespot reviewers would seem to validate the rumors. All the secrecy surrounding the circumstances of Gerstmann's firing led to many conspiracy theories, much like the assassination of JFK. And if a movie can be made about that event, a movie should be made about JFG:

1/21/2008 - The Man of Another 100 Voices

If Frank Caliendo can have his own TV show because he can impersonate people's voices, then this guy should have one too:



Seriously, his impersonations for the most part are uncanny. But what's most amazing is the wide range of characters he can do. From cartoon characters to politicians, he can turn on a dime and go to the next impersonation without pausing a bit. He's more schizophrenic than Robin Williams. Oh wait, he's #89.

1/20/2008 - Bizarro Super Mario Bros. (2 videos)

Most gamers have played the original Super Mario Bros. so many times that they can play through Stage 1-1 with their eyes closed. Oh wait, here is an example:



But wait... as cool as it is, this is not the video I wanted to feature today. It's just an example of how we can be hard-wired to complete a stage of a video game through repeated play. I can time my jumps on the multiple-coined blocks to collect the maximum amount of coins, for example. I know where the 1-UP is after the fourth pipe. I know when the invincibility wears off after collecting the Star-Man.

Well, what if someone took Stage 1-1 of Super Mario Bros., recreated it, but completely made it hell to play... ESPECIALLY for those who is all too familiar with the game. For example, instead of spawning a power-up mushroom by hitting a certain block, how about spawning an enemy instead. That's just one of the dozens of devious, dastardly changes in this Super Mario mod:



The missile coming out of the flagpole is just plain evil.

1/19/2008 - Pregnant Jamie Lynn Speaks Out

If there's one thing that will bring down the American society, it must be the tabloid culture. Really, is there a point to the relentless paparazzi-chasing of self-destructive celebrities like Lindsay Lohan? Who buys these tabloid magazines or watches these entertainment programs anyway? These things are probably the single least instructive forms of "entertainment" in the world. Actually, let me correct that. They tell you what NOT to do with your life. I try not to make moral judgments, but look at the case of Britney Spears. If Kevin Federline is deemed as the good parent in that relationship, something is seriously wrong. And her tween star sister Jamie Lynn? Pregnant at 16. That's all I have to say. I mean, if she didn't learn from the (widely publicized) mistakes of her older sister, then she deserves parody videos like this one:

1/17/2008 - Tekken 3 [psx4iphone 0.1.0]

Now here's something I didn't expect to see on the iPhone... a full Playstation emulator on it! If you thought the NES emulator on the iPhone was impressive, this will knock your socks off. Yes, it has a pretty bad framerate, but it's just the first version. Now, you may ask, "why not just get a PSP"? Well, that's certainly a way to fulfill your desire to play Playstation on the go, but can you also play Gameboy games on it? How about NES games? Of course not. That's why the idea of having these emulators on the iPhone is great (if you're willing to skate on the edge of legality).



Boy, I can't wait for the official SDK to come out next month so we can see all sorts of these kinds of programs for the iPhone/iPod Touch. It's fair to say that it would be hard to control a game with a virtual control pad as shown here, but once there's an official way for developers to write applications for the iPhone and interact with the hardware, I can imagine someone creating a dockable add-on for the iPhone with physical controller buttons. Something like that could make the iPhone a true mobile gaming platform. Watch out, Nintendo and Sony!

Mortal Kombat II - Japanese version for the SNES

One of Nintendo's biggest missteps was the exclusion of blood on the SNES version of Mortal Kombat. After all, the original Mortal Kombat was not really known for its gameplay. Yes, it had digitized actors for its character sprites, but so did Pit Fighter at the time. Mortal Kombat was really about one thing: gruesome violence. When you see Sub-Zero rip someone's head off, know why it became one of the biggest franchises in the fighting genre. That's why it was so critical to put all the violence back into the sequel, Mortal Kombat too. It went on, of course, to be a huge seller.

You'd think then, in Japan, they would leave the violence in their version of MKII for the SNES. After all, their games are usually censored by the time they came to the States. For example, in the game Final Fight, the character of Poison became a man in the American version because her costume was too revealing (there's also an issue of whether or not she's actually a transvestite, but that's for another time). So it really surprised me to see that Japan censored Mortal Kombat II for their audience:



It kind of reminds me of how they brought Kill Bill over to cable TV by using black and white during the sword fighting scene. And green blood? What the heck?

1/15/2008 - Human Killing Machine Review

Our friend with the cool British accent, Ashens, is back with another cheap knockoff from the videogame world. The medal for the best reviews of bad games has to be the AVGN, but Ashens certainly deserves a prize for finding the rarest of rare, the weirdest of weird, and the crappiest of crap. In this instance, who knew there was a game made that was based on the original Street Fighter engine? Street Fighter was hardly a great game... it had stiff controls, average graphics, repetitive sounds, and uneven gameplay. It did spawn the revolutionary Street Fighter II, so I can't complain too much about it. I probably could complain about this game that Ashens found, however:



I could only imagine if THIS was the Street Fighter II Capcom would release years later. Capcom would most definitely have died as a company. I doubt there would even be a fighting game "genre", and I think the arcades would have died in the early nineties rather the late nineties.

Every NES Game Ever Made! Screenshots!

Not much to comment on for this video... the title pretty much says it all.

1/13/2008 - Simpsons YouTube parody

We've seen an Apple fan commercial actually being used by Apple in their iPod Touch marketing. That's just one example of YouTube's growing influence on pop culture bleeding over into the "mainstream" media. Another great example is this parody of one of the most popular YouTube videos out there, Noah's "Everyday" video where one man takes a photo of himself everyday for 6 years. Nobody does parodies better than the Simpsons, and so when Homer's life flashes before his eyes, it's not just 6 years, but 39!



Hardcore of the series might recognize some of the backdrops of Homer's childhood and adolescence, but most casual viewers will undoubtedly recognize the various costumes Homer has worn at the end of the "video" which comprises Homer's life within the timespan of the show. Very clever, and very funny.

1/12/2008 - Mac Vs Pc: True Multitasking

It was only a couple of years ago when I would recommend getting 512 MB of RAM for new computers. With all the stupid Windows updates and the necessary anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-adware software you need, I now have to recommend 1 GB of RAM, and that's just for Windows XP. It's really quite ridiculous. If you had a new computer without the updates and other software, it would run fine on 256 MB. Now, it would just crawl.

And with Windows Vista, it's worse. I don't have much experience with it, but I've been told that you need 2 GB of RAM now for it to run smoothly. How insane is that? Before, 2 GB of memory for a single computer was only needed for high-end desktop publishing or video editing. Now, you need it to run regular productivity software? Unbelievable. This is where the inevitable comparison with Macs come in. Since Macs don't really need all the security software that Windows needs, this is what you can do with 2 GB of RAM:



Try that on Vista.

1/11/2008 - YOUTUBE CHANGES NEED FIXING

Mr. Black in this video encapsulates everything I've been thinking about YouTube's new "redesign":



The purpose of this blog is to find some really cool videos on YouTube and to share them with you, the reader, while giving my personal comments on them. When YouTube redesigned their site a couple of months ago, it made my job a whole lot harder.

First, they take away the "Gadgets and Gaming" genre. Since I'm into video games and computers, a lot of my favorite videos fall into that category. By taking the genre away, my viewing choices became so much more limiting. They've somewhat remedied this by putting in the "Science and Technology" genre, but a lot of gaming videos are now split among that genre and the "Entertainment" genre. It makes no friggin' sense! Why would they do this?

The other thing they did was to make the selection of sort options a drop-down list instead of the links they used before. Mr. Black complained about this too. What took only two clicks of the mouse before now takes four. Aren't newer interfaces supposed to be easier than they were previously? I guess not according to the programmers at Youtube.

1/10/2008 - super mario galaxy DS !!!

When I first saw this video, I said "Whoa!". When I heard later that this video was a fake, I said "Whoa!" I mean, if that's a fake, it's probably the best fake I've ever seen. Most of the time when people create fake videos through clever video editing, you can see the seams and you can tell it's a fake. It's like that Superman video I featured earlier with Tom Welling in costume. You can tell it his face was superimposed on Christopher Reeve or Brandon Routh. In this video, I can't tell where the seams are. Everything looks like it would be if Nintendo themselves produced it.



Not only does this video look real, it plays on the hopes of all the owners of Super Mario Galaxy out there that this kind of functionality with the Nintendo DS was there in the first place. Supposedly, the Wii was going to be a hub for the DS to download demos or even full games from. The PS3 has that kind of functionality with the PSP, so why not the Wii and DS? And before the videos was revealed as a fake, I'm sure people were excited by the notion that progress on the DS version of Super Mario Galaxy would translate into Wii points. Something like this would make a lot of sense. Gamers have plenty of incentive to finish a game and unlock all the extras, but winning Wii currency would be pretty sweet.

1/9/2008 - Matrix style flipbook animation

After watching the Simpsons movie, I think it's time for a revival of traditionally animated movies. Computer animated movies are cool and nice to look at, but they do look artificial sometimes. Hand-drawn animation seems more organic because animators don't just cut and paste and let the computer go on autopilot to create their work. Things have to look right frame by frame and that's not easy to do. I'm not asking for more of the same old Disney fairy tales that try to appeal to all ages by putting in contemporary pop-culture elements. I'd like to see some sci-fi or adventure stuff. Take a look at this commercial that features hand-draw flipbook style animation and imagine the possibilities:

1/8/2008 - Tracking fingers with the Wii Remote

A lot of people now are trying to duplicate the whole gesture interface technology they conceptualized in the movie Minority Report. While it seems like it might be tiring to wave your hands all day instead of using a keyboard and mouse on a table, it was very cool to see in the movie. There aren't any products out there now that completely gives you the exact Minority Report experience, but some clever programmers are getting very close with some surprising help from the Nintendo Wii.

When Nintendo presented the Wii remote interface, they made it seem like a magic wand. But there is some high technology built into the remote, and while many point out the accelerometer inside, some programmers are using the infrared sensor to create some fantastic applications. One of the leading individuals in this area is Johnny Lee, of Carnegie Mellon University. Here he is demonstrating how he's able to use the Wii remote to track his fingers. We are closer to the year 2054 than we think.

1/7/2008 - The Rock's message to "Stone Cold" Steve Austin

Wrestling was a guilty pleasure for me a few years ago when it was at its most popular. Yeah, there were stories of kids getting hurt copying wrestling moves and the storylines were sprinkled with smut. But a lot of it was very entertaining and it was a much needed escape for Monday nights. The Rock was one of the most popular wrestlers back then and he's now becoming a movie star. This video is a clear example of why:



It must be made clear that at the time of this "interview", the Rock was a "heel", a bad guy that the fans were supposed to root against. Instead of rooting against him, though, you can clearly hear the fans cheer for him and even completing his catchphrases. The Rock would later become a "face", of course, but I think he was in his element here as someone with arrogance and even more charisma.

1/6/2008 - SF2Nes V 0.92 gameplay video

It always surprises me at what lengths people will go to bask in their retro memories. I've mentioned the MUGEN system before when I featured the Optimus Prime vs. Megatron video. MUGEN is mostly used for integrating sprites from different fighting game franchises so that you can have dream matches like Ryu from Street Fighter vs. Scorpion from Mortal Kombat. Most of the time, MUGEN modders will use the latest versions of the characters so that they have the most animation frames to work with. However, that's not always the case as this video shows:



So what the modders tried to create here is a Street Fighter 2 experience on the NES! Using smaller sprites, only two attack buttons, and 8-bit graphics and music, this succeeds where the other bootleg versions of SF2 failed. Of course, the NES couldn't possibly reproduce the fireball effects or voices in this MUGEN mod, but a pure 8-bit experience probably wouldn't look and sound as dynamic.

1/5/2008 - NES BttF game's music is from the movie

If you've seen the Angry Video Game Nerd's review of Back to the Future for the Nintendo Entertainment System, you'll have heard him complain about the horrendous music in the game and how it doesn't sound like anything in the movie. Well, this video actually proves him wrong:



Wow, this was a revelation to me and to a lot of other gamers, I'm sure. To think that the absolutely vile cacophony from the game was actually "Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and the News, only SPED UP... that alone tells you that the programmers for this game did not know the movie at all. Also, the fact that somebody recognized it and took the time to speed down the music to match the original soundtrack... well, it just shows that old games, even bad ones, never truly die.

1/3/2008 - Esc - An animation by Justin Henton

Anybody who has worked a bit on PC's knows the basic concepts by now... the Start button, the minimize button, windows, icons, the taskbar, etc. Well, this computer animated short by Justin Henton takes advantage of your knowledge of those concepts and spins it into a whimsical little adventure that rivals some Pixar shorts. Stuff like this makes me yearn for a Tron sequel.

1/2/2008 - Terminator 2 1990 rare teaser trailer

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles debuts next week and while I have my doubts about the show, I still want to see it. Why? Well, this season of 24 has been postponed indefinitely because of the whole writers' strike thing and there's nothing else to watch on Mondays. Also, it's Terminator, man! Yeah, there's no Arnold, or James Cameron involved, but it's still going to be about killer robots and time travel. I like time travel movies in general, but when James Cameron added the concept of killer robots... it just spoke to me. I didn't watch the original Terminator in the theater (I was only 8 years old when it came out!), but when I saw it rebroadcast on TV years later, it blew my mind. It had everything: great action, special effects, drama, and a great ending. The thing is, I thought the ending was final. I mean, at the time, I was really eager to see some kind of sequel to the movie, but according to the story, Skynet was about to be destroyed soon after Kyle Reese was sent to the past, making any more time traveling impossible. There was no internet back then, so I had NO idea that they were indeed planning a sequel. So when I saw this teaser, I just about crapped my pants:



Again, I really did not expect this. This brief teaser had my mind racing... a whole assembly line of Terminators? Holy crap! Was there going to be an invasion? Are they still after John Connor? Who's gonna be the hero? I thought Arnold said he would never play a bad guy again. Well, all those questions were answered in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, a movie I saw SEVEN times in the theater. Of course, Arnold didn't play a bad Terminator, but this teaser sure made it look like he would. Which is a little disappointing because I thought he was a badass in the first movie. It turns out that he would play a bad guy again years later in... guess which movie... Give up? Batman and Robin. He should have stuck to his promise.

1/1/2008 - Ryu vs M. Bison

Happy New Year, everybody... I am back! It's getting harder to find good videos, but I've managed to accumulate a good number of them over the break. Let's start out with the big gaming news of the last month, and that's the coming of the long awaited Street Fighter IV this year. The trailer came out a couple of months ago, and while it looked amazing, we were all wondering if it was a 2-D game or a 3-D game. That was answered just last week with the first video footage of the game which revealed a 2-D fighting engine with 3-D characters and backgrounds. That came as a relief to a lot of fans who believe that SF should remain true to its 2-D roots.

There is one BIG problem that I see with the video, however. The fighting engine might be 2-D (no side-stepping or 3-D movement), but the camera actively pans around the environment in a semi-3-D way. I can see this as a problem because Street Fighter has always been about judging horizontal distances between the fighters; knowing how far your character jumps, the reach of your various punches and kicks, how far away you have to be from Zangief's spinning piledriver grab. If the camera is not straight on the two characters in a purely 2-D way, there's an unneeded extra element of guesswork that has to take place to play the game. I can appreciate the need to show off the technology at work, but that should never distract from the gameplay.

2.5-D may be the "in" thing to do nowadays, but with Street Fighter they should have drawn a line. Either go pure 2-D like Street Fighter II and III, or pure 3-D like Street Fighter EX. Otherwise, you might as well have a game like this: