Above is a pencil test of Plum getting up from a seated position for the new short. This shot’s already been cleaned up, but we’ll just have to wait for the short won’t we? Of course, Youtube’s compressor chewed the snot out of it. Enjoy!
Glorious Friday!!!
That means its time to find out about the movies coming out today.
An ice skating comedy?! Genius!
Blades of Glory – the Will Ferrell & Jon Heder comedy about rival ice skaters who get banned from the sport. They find a loophole that allows them to compete as a team. So they must put their hatred behind them in order to defeat Will Arnett & Amy Poehler in couples skating. Also I hear there are some great cameos like usual in a Will Ferrell movie. This is the 3rd movie where Ferrell plays the same cocky yet stupid character. Ron Burgundy in Anchorman, Ricky Bobby in Talladega Nights, and now Chazz Michael Michaels in Blades of Glory. I’ve heard good things so far. Laughs from beginning to end.
No Pixar might just mean No Good
Meet the Robinsons – one of Disney’s non-Pixar animated comedies. Not really any big name voices either. We get Angela Bassett, Tom Selleck, Harland Williams, Adam West, among others. Anyway, its about a boy inventor trying to find his birth when he is whisked away to the future to meet the Robinson family. Doesn’t look too interesting to me, the only thing that made me laugh is the T-Rex in the preview. But I now saw it so many times that I don’t laugh anymore.
Am I the only one who was looking forward to Radio Allergy for Gamecube? I must be, because I haven’t read any reports that the game has been canceled. However, after doing a little investigation I can’t seem to find the thing anywhere.
I had the game on my Amazon wish list and my wife pre-bought it for me as a Birthday gift well over a month ago. The game was due to hit on March 20th, but I figured I’d give it a few days before I start to wonder where it went. Anyway, I never received the game, so I decided to double check Amazon, and while you can apparently buy it and it’s available… it sure doesn’t seem like it. I hopped over to Gamestop and Ebgames and did a search for the game and it’s no where to be seen. Yep, looks to me like Radio Allergy is dead.
There also haven’t been any reviews of the title on any of the game sites I frequent. The only review I know of comes from Nintendo Power (and I think it scored a low 5.0). It’s probably not a very good game, but it would have been nice to own one final quirky game for the ‘ol Cube. What can I say? I’m a fan of shooters. Sorry, I don’t call them shmups.
Capcom is set to hold an event come April 12th in which they’re going to show off their 2007 line up. The company plans on showing three Wii titles, two of which we already know about. First is Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles which is rumored to be a little more than what was speculated earlier, and an original IP called Treasure Island Z.
What we “think” we know is that the third title is coming from legendary game designer Keiji Inafune, who is responsible for Mega Man and more recent hits like Dead Rising and Lost Planet. I’m going to take an educated guess here and say that the new title is a Mega Man game. I suppose I need to prove why I think this, so here it goes.
About a year ago an interview took place with Inafune and he was asked flat out if he was considering doing a Mega Man title for either the Playstation 3 of the Wii. He basically laid it out on the table with his response.
“…probably the target audience that’s going to purchase the PlayStation 3, uh, it’s going to be people with a lot more money, and maybe it would not be the most suitable, uh, platform for the Mega Man series…. However, the Wii definitely has some potential, and it’s maybe one where our target audience could embrace the Mega Man series. So while we haven’t planned anything specific now at this time, I think probably that the potential is the highest on that piece of hardware.” – Inafune
Today, Adobe announced their follow up to their Creative Suite series, which is un-creatively titled Creative Suite 3, or CS3. The CS series encompases the Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects apps which are geared towards the image editing, design, and animation fields. A little over a year ago, Adobe bought Macromedia’s Flash, which is the standard for delivering internet content. Not only that, but Flash has proven to be a very cost effective tool in the animation field and is widely used in such shows as “Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends”, “Little Einstiens”, most recently with Nick’s “El Tigre”, and a ton of other shows. It came as no huge surprise that Adobe would purchase Flash from Macromedia to further strengthen their hold on the design and animation fields.
CS3 includes a new version of Flash…wait for it…version CS3. Yeah. There was Flash 5, then Flash MX, Flash MX 2004, Flash 8, and now Flash CS3. What an amazing lineage. Hah. Personally, I use Flash professionally on a daily basis, and my co-workers and I have been wondering what the eventual changes will be in this new version. In fact, Adobe representatives stopped by our studio and discussed with us what changes we would like to see, what works for us and what doesn’t. To Adobe’s credit, they were very receptive to our thoughts where Macromedia blew us off in the past.
So what can we expect in the new version? According to Adobe’s site, a tight integration with Photoshop and Illustrator as well as a streamlined interface uniting the products is in place. ActionScript (which is completely foreign to me) is now bumped up to version 3.0 and promises beefier coding. Illustrator-like drawing tools are now being implemented as well as enhanced Quicktime support.
Sounds great doesn’t it? But what does it really mean? Clearly, having the ability to import a PSD or AI document into Flash and still retain its layering is a great boon. In the past Flash has been dismal when attempting to import an Illustrator file. Most of the times, the color interpratations were off and gradients are interpreted incorrectly. If you’ve never had to do this before, this often leads to more headaches than you could realize. Exporting bitmaps has generally been poor as well. Hopefully, Photoshop will lend some of its image editing smarts in this lacking area for Flash.
Just the other day Nintendo released some new details on the full version of the Opera Internet Browser for Wii. There are a bunch of snazzy new features, but the one that caught my eye is that the tool bar is going to auto hide when the cursor isn’t over it. This is the best addition I could ask for, so what does it mean for you guys? Hopefully, full screen cartoons.
That’s right, I’d expect a revamp of the Wii Section around the time the next Episode launches. I would love for people to be able to watch our latest episode and the older ones in full screen on their TV. The only other feature I’m hoping for is that the Flash player in the browser will be upgraded, but I’m not putting money on it.
As for when the new cartoon is going to wrap up, we aren’t sure. I know we promissed that things wouldn’t take nearly as long as Ninja, but the truth is that the episode grew and we want it to be something we can be proud of when all is said and done.
I’m trying a new style with these Tuesday updates. Since the DVD releases aren’t really a huge deal to a lot of people, I’m gonna make it a lot quicker and to the point.
This week on DVD!!!
Children of Men from director Alfonso Cuaron, starring Clive Owen, is a little mix of sci-fi and thriller. Set in the future when no new children are born. One woman gets pregnant and it’s up to Clive to keep her safe from the government.
The Pursuit of Happyness starring Will Smith is the true story about a poor man trying to take care of his family while being an over the hill, no-pay intern with the hopes of striking it big with the company. Oscar nominated performance by The Fresh Prince.
Happy Feet is an animated movie, Robin Williams mainly voicing, about a bunch of singing and dancing penguins. It is also the most recent Academy Award winner for Best Animated Picture.
Curse of the Golden Flower is a Crouching Tiger style movie starring Chow Yun-Fat and Gong Li’s boobs. Expect a lot of fight scenes and a lot of subtitles.
Turistas is a horror thriller about a bunch of young hot teens on vacation who get robbed, kidnapped, and I’m guessing eventually killed. Expect blood and boobs.
Van Wilder 2 is an unnecessary sequel starring Kal Penn reprising his role as Taj and trying to be the cool guy character that Ryan Reynolds perfected as Van Wilder in the original. National Lampoon is a joke…. in a bad way.
Fan of TV shows?
Well today you can get The Addams Family Volume 2, The Shield Season 5, 7th Heaven Season 4, The Jeffersons Season 6, Mind of MenSTEALia Season 2, and Full House Season 6. Hmmmm, good stuff!
I didn’t think it would come to this.
A wrestling video game series from a decade ago still is generating enough buzz to be one of the most viewed articles on the Shamoozal Nerdlog. (Refer to it here). To be honest, I only wrote the article because I know most Shamoozal readers are here for video game talk. I wanted to contribute something more than just movies or random goofy stuff. Even though I’m not much of a gamer, I needed a gaming topic that I was knowledgeable in. Since I’m a huge pro wrestling fan, I decided to talk about the N64 games that were somewhat popular with wrestling fans and video game fans of the time. Phil informed me a couple months later that people were still viewing the post I made. I was in shock, as I thought it was a throw away post that would make some of my friends laugh and think about how great of a game it was in its time…. and still today.
This general interest in the topic has forced me, in a way, to create a follow-up. In movie-land the sequel usually isn’t as good as the original so I was hesitant to even do a follow up at all. But again, since the site is geared towards video games most of the time, I decided….. WHY NOT?! I’ll contribute another.
When Phil went to Japan, he came back with a few goodies for all the family. The kids all got some of those UFO bubble toys, and I got a one of those pixel art deals. Its pretty cool. Its basically a bunch of colored pegs that you plug into a plastic grid to form an 8-bit Nintendo character. I got a Goomba from the origianal Super Mario Bros. If I want to, I can also make a variation of a squashed Goomba.
Oh, and I also got a block of CalorieMate, too.
I first heard of CalorieMate from Metal Gear Solid 3. In that game, Snake has to hunt food in the wild in order to survive. Along the way, you can pick up such goodies as ramen noodles and CalorieMates which give you the biggest boost of stamina in the game. In fact, you start the game out with one in your backpack. They’re so good, they make Snake exclaim “pretty tasty!” after he gulps it down.
If you read our Ninja Turtle feature from a few days ago, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of the Turtles and was pumped up to see TMNT no matter how it turned out. I managed to squeeze in a viewing during what was a rather busy day, and the good news is that TMNT is the follow up to the original movie that we have all been waiting for over the last 17 years.
Similar to how Bryan Singer handled Superman Returns as not only a follow up to the original Superman movies but also a reboot of the franchise, TMNT follows the same path. The events from the first three movies have all taken place (you can spot some evidence of all three movies with a keen eye) making this the fourth film in the saga. The movie begins with a quick history of the Turtles and who they are and how they have defeated the Shredder. Fast forward to present day, and we come to find out the things aren’t going so well for the brothers four. Leonardo has been sent away by Splinter, but has taken longer than expect to return home. Michelangelo has gone the route of the Ghostbusters after they were put “out of business,” Donatello’s genius has been reduced to being tech support for computer users, and Raphael has decided to take up the cape and cowl. That said, the premise of the entire movie is to reunite the Turtles as a team, and as a family.
As a long time fan, it’s interesting and refreshing to see this take on the Turtles. In fact, when the Turtles are the center of attention, the film seems to find its stride. For the first time since the original movie, each of the Turtles has a unique and distinct personality. Unfortunately, the good stuff is tied together by what ultimately makes the whole picture fail as a good movie.