Last night I was finally able to catch a showing of Persepolis at the Angelika Film Center in NYC. It’s an animated film based on an autobiographical short series of black and white comic books by Marjane Satrapi. The film faithfully retains Satrapi’s graphical style and charm, and to put it mildly it was awesome.

Persepolis follows Marjane as she grows up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. She bares witness to the crumbling of her society as radical Islam slowly takes hold of its people and begins to turn women into objects. At a young age, her parents send her abroad to that she may study in safety as Iran’s war with Iraq intensifies during the early 80’s. In Europe, she is confronted with racial prejudice and fear because of her Iranian upbringing. She eventually makes her return to Iran where life has not gotten any easier.

Watching it made me realize just how dumb I am. We are given a glimpse into a people who are really just like us, and who want the same thing, but somehow find themselves under the oppressive thumb of their government. Music and clothing is suddenly subjected to censorship after the overthrowing of the Shah, and any Western influence is rejected. Alcohol is prohibited. Attempts at throwing a party is met with armed police charging in and subjecting you to either paying a fine or receiving corporal punishment. All young Marjane cares about is getting a copy of “Iron Maiden” from the black market and rock’n out in her room playing air guitar with a tennis racket. However, as she grows into an out spoken young adult, she can no longer accept what has become of her culture.

A 70’s basketball star.
Sisters battling for a dude.
Those are the only 2 major releases hitting the theaters today. Enjoy.

Soccer, Racing, Ice Skating, and now Basketball.

Semi Pro – Will Ferrell plays Jackie Moon, the owner/coach/player for the ABA Flint Michigan Tropics. When the ABA decides to shut down, Moon has to rally his team to win so they are considered for the NBA. Also starring Woody Harrelson and Andre Benjamin.

My brain would explode if a little sumthin, sumthin happened…

30 Days Of Night – a small Alaskan town experiences 30 straight days of darkness during a time when the sun does not reach the town. Most of the town’s inhabitants move away for this month but some do remain. Josh Hartnett is the sheriff who stays to watch the town and the few people remaining. That’s when the vampires attack!!

Beowulf – A warrior named Beowulf must defeat a monster named Grendel who is terrorizing towns and killing villagers. Also, the monster’s mother, a mythical creature, starts killing out of revenge. Animated movie from Robert Zemeckis with voices of Ray Winstone, Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, and more.

The Darjeeling Limited – from Wes Anderson comes the story of 3 brothers (Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman) who go on a train journey to India to bond with each other after not being together for a year.

Caught the last 45 minutes of this on cable last night. It’s literally been ages since I’ve seen this train wreck, and watching it again now proves that it’s even worse than I thought. The original film, while having its fair share of cheese, is still a worthwhile movie to check out. The creators of the franchise had absolute control over the original movie and I think it showed. In part 2 it’s pretty obvious that the suits got a hold of this franchise and decided to make an extremely manufactured film. The entire Vanilla Ice segment is painful to watch. It really is the first Jump the Shark moment in Turtle history. The Turtles themselves not only look terrible (how can the costumes actually downgrade with the sequel? And to think they get worse looking in part 3) but don’t say or do anything worthwhile through the duration of the movie.

Donatello in particular looks like Kiddy Kong, with this big stupid jaw, and at one point he’s upset because he finds out that the turtles were created by mistake. He then boo hoos to Master Splinter saying he thought maybe they were a little more special than he originally believed. Donetello would never question science, and he would understand completely that they’re a genetic mutation that was nothing more than a freak accident. I could see Mikey bitching about this since he’s the dumbest turtle of the group, but regardless, what the hell is the big let down? Freak accident or not, they are special because how many fucking turtles are walking around kicking ass? Four. So he better shut his flipping pie hole about being special. What a worthless plot point in a worthless movie.

A Presidential assassin.
The remake of classic movies.
A stupid sheriff.
A high school therapist.
Those are the themes of this week’s releases. Let’s enjoy!

Quaid trying his best Harrison Ford impression.

Vantage Point – The President (William Hurt) is shot while giving a speech in front of a large crowd. The movie involves the point of view of five different people to see if the assassin can be found. Also starring Dennis Quaid, Matthew Fox, Forest Whitaker, Sigourney Weaver, and more.

That sure isn’t Peter Weller.

Michael Clayton – George Clooney works at a large corporate law firm. He takes care of the dirtiest cases that come across the plate of co-founder Sydney Pollack. He gets involved in a multi-million dollar suit that seems to be sabotaged while struggling to deal with his own problems in his personal life.

American Gangster – Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) builds a drug empire in the city outplaying even members of the local crime syndicate. Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) is a cop who starts to figure out who is behind the shift in power on the streets.

In The Valley of Elah – Tommy Lee Jones and Susan Sarandon are awaiting their son’s return home from Iraq. When he doesn’t show, Jones starts looking into the matter and finds out there’s something weird going on with the whole situation. Written and Directed by Paul Haggis (Crash).

Well it’s that time of year again, when we look forward to the coming year and realize that E3 isn’t what it used to be. In desperation many gamers cling to the notion that other conferences and trade shows are going to rise up, triumphantly pulling the E3 sword out of the stone. Well guys, you might want to get that bottle of Paxil ready for a hard fall. We’ve already been through a rough time at CES and I’m not sure if some of you can handle the pain of another letdown. If last years nonsense was any indication, I’m sure there are a lot of people out there clinging to the idea that something crazy is going to happen.

The fact of the matter is this: GDC is not a conference to drop megaton announcements. Its a place where people who do the same job get together and meet about the future of their industry. Sure, sometimes someone sneaks in a big announcement, but its usually in the context of how its going to push things forward. Some new games will probably be shown in varying stages of development, but its not going to be a bombshell, it will most likely be something you already know about.

Believe me, no one wants a neutron bomb E3 announcement more than I do… but we have to face the hard facts. So please, hunker down… enjoy what little news comes out of this thing, take it in stride… and for chrissakes, put down the exacto knife.

Yesterday Frank informed me that G4 has a new show on called “Unbeatable Banzuke.” The show is from Japan, and it has been brought here from the same studio that has brought us “Ninja Warrior.” I checked G4’s schedule and saw the show was coming on at 9pm, and I couldn’t wait to check it out.

Meanwhile, the new “Knight Rider” was set to premier last night at 9pm as well. The trouble here is that my wife wanted to watch Knight Rider because she was a fan of the original series. Since I’m always forcing her to watch shows I like, I decided not to argue about it and reluctantly put on Knight Rider.

Knight Rider begins with some old dude who gets held up by a couple of bad guys. They search his house, which is full of crazy robotics and more computer monitors than BestBuy, when they come across KITT, a brand new Ford Mustang Shelby GT 500KR with a mind of its own. Because KITT is self aware, he senses trouble and drives out of the place. The bad guys shoot KITT, and as the bullets hit the car we get slow mo shots of the car either healing from the bullets that hit or deflecting the bullets. I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking at actually. I just know that bullets don’t work on KITT.

We than meet the new Hasselhoff of the show, Michael, who is seen in bed with some hot woman. His buddy comes in to bother him, and while he’s doing this another scantily clad woman jumps into bed with him. Because it was revealed this guy had a threesome in the first minute he’s on screen, we’re supposed to think that Michael is the man, but he’s really just a bad actor. Then it cuts to a much needed commercial.

With this week’s announcement of Wal-Mart’s adopting of Blu-Ray coupled with Best Buy recent announcement to aggressively market the format, it is clear that the so called “hi-def format war” is over. Toshiba, the big guns behind the competing HD-DVD format, has announced it will be ceasing its production of HD-DVD players.

Myself, I am excited that a clear winner has finally been decided. Ever since I bought my hi-def TV a few years back, I like so many, many others have been waiting for some kind of home video upgrade of the DVD to take advantage of all those new pixels. When it became apparent that there was going to be split in the marketplace, I think all home theater enthusiasts gave a collective sigh. We knew what was ahead. Without a standardized format to deliver all that hi-def goodness, we knew we were going to have to wait even longer, and worse possibly be left out in the cold if we gambled on the wrong format.

This past summer, I took the plunge and bought a PS3. While I knew that once Metal Gear Solid 4 was released I was going to buy a PS3 anyway, the real reason I bought it then was I wanted to taste a slice of hi-def heaven. Once “Ratatouille” was announced for Blu-Ray only, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. I haven’t bought any new DVD’s for my collection in probably over a year knowing that someday I’ll want a hi-def version, and I REALLY wanted “Ratatouille”. So a PS3 it was for me. Nevertheless, I was and still am a bit gun shy with buying Blu-Ray titles. At the time, I was afraid of the BR format being wiped out by HD-DVD, and they are still a bit pricey to just pick one up on a whim.

Hey all. Things are moving along on the next GFG short for the Shamoozal. This week was a bit slow, but I was able to get a design knocked out for a new character named Hipster that will be joining the cast for this episode. You already got a sneak peek of him last week in the storyboard image I posted, and this is most likely what his final design will be pending any color changes or tweeks he may get during the rest of the production. I still have to do a lipsync chart him as he’s got a lot of dialog in this one. For Little Bastard and Soccer Mom in “Rated ‘M’ For Molestor”, I kind of skipped that step because they didn’t have that many lines. I just animated their mouths on the fly which was kind of fun and liberating, however Hipster here probably should get a fuller set of mouth movements to better accommodate this new short. I also have to rig some basic brow movements and a blink, but for the most part he’s ready for animation.

With Phil being locked into an eternal battle with his heater and him moving into his new place next week, the short is being pushed back. It was scheduled to be posted this weekend, but what are you gonna do, right? Grab some snacks and hang tight!