A sequel with a different main character.
A short story turned into a film.
A true story.
These are the basic topics of the 3 main releases for today.

Evan is no Bruce.

Evan Almighty – Steve Carell reprises his role from Bruce Almighty. No role for Jim Carrey this time. God (Morgan Freeman) appears to Evan (Carell) and tells him to build an Ark and get 2 of each animal much like Noah in the Bible. Of course, hilarity ensues when Evan refuses to believe this is true until his life starts to change by growing a constant beard, animals following him around, and the sort.

Representing the 1408 dawg.

Being an exhibitor at Wizard World last week had a few advantages. One was that I was able to roam the floor before anyone came in, so on Sunday morning I used it to my advantage and checked out Sony’s (small) booth. They had a decent spread of titles across all three of their major platforms. On the PS3 front they had playable demos of some currently released games, downloadable titles, Lair, and Heavenly Sword. After a quick go at Lair, which had some cool motion controls, but was rather “blah” beyond that, I decided to run through the Heavenly Sword demo.

The demo started out with a cinematic sequence that I decided to skip since I just wanted to get into the game. After getting accustomed to the God of War like controls (complete with roll dodges mapped to the right analog stick) I decided to run over to the “glowing” spot which activated a QTE sequence. The scene was cool, with our female fighter, Nariko, running down large ropes that the bad guys on the other side were cutting down. Kind of reminded me of the wedding sequence from Final Fantasy X, only you had a bit of control over it by tapping the X button and hitting right or left of the stick to jump to different ropes.

Once the action got started it was your standard beat ‘em up, though in this case more like God of War than say Final Fight. Maybe it was because the AI was turned down, but these bad guys were rather dumb. They just kind of stood there and allowed you to beat the crap out of them. To be honest, I don’t know how the guy playing before me died. He must really suck at video games. You had your standard slash attack and “strong” attacks, and it seemed like the circle button was used to do some of the fancier moves. After tearing through the first wave of baddies, I was treated to another short cut scene and ended up on the ground in the middle of a town. Surprise, more bad guys come running in and I hit the same buttons to kill all of them.

I suppose I’ll begin things with the good news first. If you haven’t already heard, Konami has announced Contra 4 for the Nintendo DS. Being a ridiculously huge Contra fan, I’m rather pumped about this news. The bad news is that it is being developed by WayForward Technologies based in CA. The fact of the matter is that when Contra isn’t developed in Japan, horrible things happen. The first terrible thing can be found directly in the press release.

“Contra 4 takes place two years after the events of Contra III: The Alien Wars. After saving earth from invasion by Red Falcon, Bill Rizer and Lance Bean are confronted with a new extraterrestrial menace: the terrifying Black Viper. Joined by hard-boiled mercenaries Mad Dog and Scorpion, the warriors must once again wage war against an entire army of invaders.”

Whoa, what?

Last time I checked Mad Dog and Scorpion are Bill and Lance. I mean, it took us Americans long enough to wrap our minds around the fact that the names Bill and Lance were lost in translation, but now WayForward is going to screw up the entire time line by claiming Mad Dog and Scorpion are separate people. Geez… who are the bosses behind Black Viper? Jimbo and Sully? Thanks guys, you now made the work of hundreds of Wiki-ers a heck of a lot harder.

Come out and join Shamoozal for some good, old-fashioned, bomb defusing, hostage rescuing fun. It’s the first (of hopefully many) Shamoozal Community CS:S night, Wednesday 6/20 @ 10 PM EST. Check our forums for more info, there’s a sticky in the Video Games area with everything you need.
UPDATE: So we had a great time last night. We had about 10 people come out over the course of the 2 hours. We’ll be making this a weekly thing as long as people want to do it, so come out and join the fun.

Reno 911: Miami – The Reno’s sheriff department must take over the daily police activites in Miami when all the rest of the police force is quarantined at a convention center due to a deadly virus set out by a drug lord played by Paul Rudd.
Bridge to Terabithia – Two friends create a fantasy world called Terabithia where they rule over the land and all of its creatures.
Miss Potter – Renee Zellwegger is a lonely, single woman who writes a book and falls in love with her publisher.
Gray Matters – a brother and sister fall for the same girl… who happens to be marrying the brother. Yes that’s right. Heather Graham plays the lesbo sister, Bridget Moynahan plays the girl stuck in the middle, and Thomas Cavanagh is the brother getting married to the girl.

Also hitting DVD is the Die Hard Collection in anticipation of the 4th movie hitting theaters this summer. The Abandoned, which was the most popular film of the After Dark Horrorfest which took place last year, is also hitting DVD. Then for TV shows we get Silver Spoons Season 1 (SCHRODER!), Picket Fences Season 1, Animaniacs Volume 3, Pinky & The Brain Volume 3, and Powerpuff Girls Season 1.

There’s some good choices this week. Die Hard is badass and I definitely want to see them all again before seeing the new one. I heard from Phil that Bridge to Terabithia was a good movie. And I saw Reno 911 in theaters and thought it was hilarious. I’m gonna have to go with my instincts on this one and choose Reno.

The teaser for the next Pixar film, “Wall-E” has been released on the grand ol’ internets the the other day. Its still a whole year off and won’t see life on the silver screen until the summer of 2008, however its never too late to start pimping your stuff. There’s not much info to be gleaned from the teaser other than the idea for “Wall-E” (pronounced ‘Wally’) has been around since the first “Toy Story” was wrapping up production, and that our protagonist who looks like Johnny 5’s little brother dreams of space flight. Well, that’s my guess anyway. That and he sounds a bit too much like Man-Bot for my tastes…

The one thing I love about Pixar and their marketing is how they show off all the conceptual art that goes into making these CGI wonders.The teaser is about 80% story sketches and concept art from their previous films.

Check it out at: http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/walle/

Whew! What a weekend so far. Today was the second day of the convention and foot traffic picked up a whole hell of alot in general from yesterday. There are tons and tons of toys and comic books to look through that if you were a hardcore comic-head, you’d loose your mind.

There’s all kinds of stuff going on. Sony has a pretty cool section with a bunch of playable games for all their platforms like “Lair” for the PS3 and “God of War” on the PS2. Unfortunately, we dont get much time to peruse the isles as we’re off to the side away from all the commercial tables and booths. There are a bunch of panels and what-nots happening from industry professionals. There’s a whole bunch of cos-players walking around, but most of the time I forget I have a camera and I don’t get to take their picture. However, we DID have a run-in with a particularly famous internet-celeb that we’re just gonna’ have to tell you all about later.

So in short, the con is going pretty well for us at The Shamoozal. We’re not exactly widely known. Most passerby’s look at our characters and don’t think much of them because they’re not your classic, comic book super hero, nor are they highly rendered artwork with cross hatching and shading. Most people don’t understand that these are ANIMATED characters that actually move, and that the characters are simple in design for this purpose. However, we do get some people when they walk by and see our work they get it. They like what they see and understand it. A few people even recognized our shorts and some actually laughed at a joke in them. Of course, this makes us feel all warm and giddy inside that I promptly peed myself like a child. Hah.

Well, that’s all for now. I just wanted to do a quick and dirty update and let all the Shamoozalites in on what’s up. We’re planning on going into all the nitty gritty after the dust settles from this weekend so hang tight for more updates.

So Phil and I are getting ready to head on out to Wizard World in Philly. I know Phil and Jim have been spending alot of time getting all our materials together so we can look somewhat professional. They did a really nice job with everything so I think we’re going to do well this weekend. Hey, with 15 inch, foamcore mounted cut-outs of Grey, Jacquo, and Plum how can we NOT get a crowd?

See you there!

Another summer Friday. Another summer blockbuster schedule.
The movie studios continue to unleash what they hope will be big time box office money raker inners (that’s not a real word). What better way to do that then to do another Marvel movie? Oh hey maybe even throw in an old school young detective series turned into a movie. Is that enough for you? No? Oh well then you’ll also get a long delayed video game turned movie. That should cure your summer cravings for this week. Want to know more about all these movies? Then continue on my friends….

A badass looking character in a just plain bad movie.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer – The four radioactive weirdoes are back to save the day against a mysterious foe. The Silver Surfer (voiced by Laurence Fishburne and played by Hellboy’s Abe Sapien himself Doug Jones) has come to Earth to notch it up on his list of destroyed planets. All the originals are back as the heroes, Ioan Gruffed, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, and Michael Chiklis. This may be a spoiler but I heard Dr Doom will also return.

Looks like a young Julia Roberts
EDIT: I just found out its actually her neice, WOW I didnt know, I swear!

In case you missed the news in the forums or the podcast. Phil and Frank will be taking up residence in the Artist’s Alley at this years Wizard World in Philadelphia. The convention runs from Friday June 15th to Sunday June 17th. Hours are posted in the image above and more information can be found at the Wizard World web site. If you live in the Philadelphia/NJ/NYC area come out and check out the show, it’s definitely a nerd extravaganza. Most of the Smorgas Board crew will be popping in and out thoughout the weekend, so it will be quite the gathering. Come on out and give Shamoozal your support!