Do you know what Friday means for the Shamoozal?
It means you have to sit through one of my movie posts.
SIX friggin movies are duking it out this weekend to knock out 300 as the king of the box office. You wanna know about what movies are coming out? Then lets go.
Eat it and Love it.

T-U-R-T-L-E POWER!!!!

TMNT – For those dummies that don’t know, TMNT stands for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The popular comic book, cartoon, toy, live action movie, and whatever the hell else they did, now becomes an animated movie. CGI style! You don’t even have to know what this one is about; just know that the Turtles are fun to watch. It looked like it would be a darker version of the radical dudes but lately trailers have been pointing to a more fun, kid-oriented theme. Either way, I’d like to check it out.

Marky Mark and the Funky Snipe

A few months back Frank told me about this program called Alias Sketch Book Pro. He tried telling me that it’s a better program to draw in as opposed to sketching in Photoshop and Flash (if you haven’t heard, it sucks drawing directly into Flash). I’ve been dinking around with it some more lately and I tend to agree with him now as it’s the closest thing to using a pencil in a computer program. The whole UI in the program is actually really slick and user friendly to boot. I recommend checking it out, the trial is a free download.

In the meantime, I cooked up what could be that Jacquo poop smear shirt we were talking about during Shamoozal Radio #06.

Whaddya think?

Today saw the release of the Wii game Cooking Mama: Cook Off. If you don’t know, Cooking Mama was originally released on the DS last summer as a budget title. I would never have bought a game where you cook up a virtual meal, however, Steve brought it along to one of the podcast sessions and after playing for a few minutes I knew I had to have it. For 20 bucks, how could you pass it up? Needless to say I went out and bought it the next day.

The key here is the 20 dollars part. Cooking Mama is an excellent budget title, but I would never have paid the full 35 dollars for it. The game just isn’t meaty enough, and it’s a tough sell for full price. It is however, quirky enough that the $20 price point makes the whole thing a sweet enough deal. I’m willing to bet that the reason the game did so well was thanks to its price and word of mouth. The Wii version of the game, based on the DS original, is going for $49.99. Ouch.

What happened Majesco? You guys are hurting for sales, and you made a commitment to releasing budget price titles in order to get you out of your financial mess. Believe me, I’m pulling for guys, being that your based in New Jersey, and I’d love to support a local game business, but Cooking Mama: Cook Off should have been a $30 title from the start. You’re asking us to pay the price of two and a half Cooking Mama DS games, for what is essentially a port of the DS original with a 2 player mode. Heck, even Konami/Hudson was smart and released both Kororinpa: Marble Mania and Wing Island today for $39.99. That is still a tough sell for those two games, but at least knocking the price down slightly makes it a little easier to digest. I would have went out today and bought a copy of Cooking Mama, but I’m not paying full price for it. I can only imagine how many others are thinking the same thing.

COMIN’ A YEEEEEEEAH HA! DVD TIME!

First I’ll start with a short synopsis of what each movie is about. This is going to be as general as it gets with information I know just off the top of my head. Then if you continue reading you’ll get my personal opinion of what looks like a good buy for this week.
Blood Diamond is a movie about the craziness of the diamond hunt going on in Africa. Rocky Balboa is the final installment in the classic boxing series by Sly Stallone. The Nativity Story is the story of Jesus’ birth. Eragon is about dragon riders. Everyone’s Hero is an animated movie about a boy and his talking baseball bat and ball. The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning is supposed to be the early days of Bo, Luke, and Daisy Duke.

A couple other random releases are Batman Beyond Season 3, Miami Vice Seasons 3 and 4, a cult classic Re-Animator, and the Comedy Central William Shatner Roast.

Listen, if you’ve been a member of the Shamoozal’s Smorgas Board for a while now then you probably know there was a lot of buzz going on behind the new Rocky movie. Some were haters, some were lovers, and some were undecided. We literally had all sides of the spectrum on this one. Some of us HAD to see it, some of us REFUSED to see it, and some were undecided if they would or not. Since I was a big fan of the rest of the series, being one of very few fans of even the 5th film, I was in the group of people that HAD to see it. And now I’m here to recommend it for DVD of the week. If you have to buy one, its gotta be Rocky goddamn Balboa. A waaaaaay better ending to the series than Rocky V.
But if you’re one of the Rocky haters, then Blood Diamond is an AWESOME movie too. Its interesting, violent, and there are some great performances by Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Honsou. I definitely want to pick this one up eventually.

With the release of the new theatrical Ninja Turtle movie, simply titled TMNT, I feel it’s time to take a moment to share a little retrospective of my favorite green machines. When I hear the words “Ninja Turtles” I can’t help but think back to my youth, the days when Turtle Power meant something, and when saying “radical” was acceptable, and cool.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw the Ninja Turtles; I hated them. My memory is a little fuzzy, but I remember a kid in my class brought the toys into school one day. A friend of mine and I were playing around with them when we decided that they were “stupid,” and proceeded to act like assholes and tear off their heads (that was when they had the soft heads). Immediately we realized we did bad and tried to reattach the heads, but failed. So we left them in a corner and probably went and ruined something else instead. Youths… a bunch of assholes.

However, I suppose the memory of tearing their heads off never left me. Not much later I remember going shopping with my Mom for a day, and I spotted a copy of the cartoon series on VHS. After a bit of begging, my Mom rented the tape for me, and from that moment on, I was a Turtle fan for life.

It’s strange how quickly time goes by, isn’t it? It feels like it was only yesterday where I’d spend Friday nights between Nintendo’s chat rooms and the good old SNES (playing Chrono Trigger), but the fact of the matter is that it’s been over 10 years since those days. Let us go back to the year 1995, when Nintendo launched the Nintendo Power Source on America Online. The NPS was the official online community for all things Nintendo, and was one of the main reasons I convinced my Dad that the Internet was the way of the future. Not only would I be able to read about video games all day, and get news before the magazines did, but I’d also be able to chat it up with fellow gamers. Of course I told him the Internet did other things too, like get the type of news he was interested in, and of course send something called “e-mail” around.

The Nintendo Power Source itself wasn’t actually anything all that special, which was a let down. It didn’t offer many previews that weren’t already in Nintendo Power (although you would occasionally get a screen shot from a new game), and the downloads available were throw aways, either a handful of old screen shots or some midi music from SNES titles. The real fun of the site lay in the “Play it Loud” area, a section of the site which contained two chat rooms, the Power Circuit and the Power Outlet. The Power Circuit was the chat room to hang out in, and for good reason, because every weeknight from 7 to 8 (eastern time) one of Nintendo’s “Cyber Jocks” would be there chatting to fellow gamers.

The Cyber Jocks
Ah the Cyber Jocks, what would we have done without you? A Cyber Jock was a Game Counselor at Nintendo of America who would join the Power Circuit to chat. The idea was for the Jock to share game tips, news, and shoot the breeze with game talk.

Hey guys. Its time for our weekly update for the new episode in production! Booyah! Let’s get to buiseness.

Above is an image of Grey and Jacquo. Clearly, they’re up to something, however I have chosen to keep that under wraps and have hidden the background. This shot pictured is maybe two or two-and-a-half seconds long, but it took me all week to do it. Crazy I know.

Animation, you are indeed a fickle mistress.

Watch the whole thing, it’s worth sticking around for a cameo by Zordon… I mean the Deku Tree.

Today marked the release of the much talked about video game from the guys over at Penny Arcade. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Penny Arcade, it is a popular web comic about video games that is widely recognized in the gaming community. In fact, it’s become so popular over the years that series creators Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik have been able to turn the property into a small gold mine. Their comics are usually featured in various gaming mags, they do contracted promotional artwork for certain games, have their own convention titled PAX, they’ve done work for the ESRB, have a collectable card game on the way and now have their own video game in the works, “On The Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode 1.” Watch the trailer below.

I have read many thoughts from different game blogs about this trailer and no one seems to have the balls to say how it really looks – like trash. To be fair, ever since the announcement of this game I have been rather intrigued by it. Jerry and Mike are clearly big time gamers, and their mouths are always running on about why game X sucks and why game Y is great. Recently they’ve been slinging mud at Silicon Knight’s head Dennis Dyack about the game Too Human and everyone is all ears. These guys have opinions that people respect, and it’s their opinions that got them where they are. That said, I expected some quality when it came to the Penny Arcade video game.

At first, I thought the 2D intro was decent. I was thinking “Oh, they went with a 2D Adventure game, neat.” Then the actual game play kicks in and it’s just painful looking. I know we don’t know anything about the game, but at least a first look should be polished and show promise. The 3D models look like Tycho and Gabe imposters, with their creepy “painted” on faces, and the animation looks like something right off a 3D students first demo reel. The actual trailer itself is treated with lousy cuts, camera’s floating off to nowhere, and the whole thing just falls apart, especially when a “mouse” cursor is spotted in some of the shots. At least give us a polished trailer. I guess no one gives a crap about all of that technical stuff when there’s the “money shot” of the Fruit F’er character jerking his junk only to unleash a full load of “bullets.”

I don’t know about you guys reading this, but I love Friday. I’m sure you do too but I just can’t help mentioning that every time I get ready for the usual Friday movie post. Even though I’m in work, I’m in a good mood because I know I get a couple days off to relax, take the edge off, and maybe have a little fun here and there. But then again I don’t really mind doing JACK SQUAT because it’s still more relaxing than sitting in work feeling stressed out….. or bored. Anyway, on to the meat and potatoes of today… MOVIES!

Shhhhhh….it Movie.

Dead Silence – from writers/director/producers of the original SAW. This new effort is about a crazy old bag who had a bunch of dolls. In the olden days she was murdered and her spirit haunts the present day. Not only HER spirit but her goddamn dolls come back too. And a killing spree begins. I don’t know about you guys, but I cannot take a puppet movie seriously. I want to see puppets involved in comedy, not in killing people and trying to be scary. This movie looks silly.

A ROCK’N GOOD TIME! A HUR HUR HUR!