Edge Of Darkness – Mel Gibson plays Thomas Craven, a homicide detective who is investigating the death of his daughter. He not only uncovers her secret life as an activisit, but also a corporate cover up and government collusion. Ray Winstone is an agent tasked with cleaning up the evidence. Directed by Martin Campbell (Casino Royale).

When In Rome – Kristen Bell plays a young New Yorker who is unlucky with love. While in Rome, she steals some coins from a popular fountain of love and causes the owners of those coins to fall in love with her. Josh Duhamel, Will Arnett, Jon Heder, Dax Shepard, and Danny Devito play the dudes.

Believe it or not but it’s been well over two months since we recorded our last edition of Shamoozal Radio. The gang reunites this Saturday, the 30th, around 8pm(ish) eastern time and we’ll be talking about the regular assortment of nonsense. Of course we’ll be recording the entire thing live and we’ll have the MP3 up afterward. Hope to see you there!

Saw VI – the sixth installment picks up right where the fifth left off. Agent Strahm is dead and Detective Hoffman has emerged as the new successor to Jigsaw. The FBI is finally getting closer to unraveling Jigsaw’s grand scheme so Hoffman must set his new game into motion.

This Is It – a compilation of interviews, backstage footage, and dress rehearsals of Michael Jackson as he prepared for his series of sold out London concerts before his untimely death. Director Kenny Ortega documents some of the last moments of Jackson’s life as he prepared for a big return to the stage.

Whip It – Ellen Page plays a chick who doesn’t exactly fit in with other girls her age. She discovers a women’s roller derby league in Austin, Texas that may be a cure for her misery. Also starring Drew Barrymore, Kristen Wiig, Juliette Lewis and more. First time directorial effort by Barrymore.

This week on NMM we have “M4, Pt. II” by the band Faunts. Anyone who has had the pleasure of completing Mass Effect will recognize this song as the music that plays over the end credits. The song works perfectly for Mass Effect. The whole game has an 80’s sci-fi movie feel to it and this song does the synth-space rock thing pretty well. I was immediately hooked on this band and decided to go check out their other releases. I was sad to see that there is no Faunts on the OST for Mass Effect 2, or any other rock music for that matter. This is the shorter music video version of the song, the actual track is twice as long with some pretty cool instrumental interludes. Anyway, if you like this track you should definitely check them out.

Legion – God has lost his faith in humankind so he sends his angels to bring about the Apocalypse on Earth. The archangel Michael (Paul Bettany) knows a pregnant woman holds the child who is the hope for human survival so he decides to protect them. A remote diner becomes the scene of their battle.

The Tooth Fairy – Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is a minor league hockey player who isn’t exactly the cleanest player. A bad deed on his part results in an unusual punishment. He must serve one week as a real life tooth fairy. Also starring Ashley Judd and Billy Crystal.

I took one look at a few stills from Capcom’s Dark Void a few years back and haven’t really looked at it much in between now and then. To be honest, I had almost forgotten that it was even coming out at all, until the seemingly much more interesting 8-bit spin off on for the DSi was announced a few weeks ago. Then I had heard that it was done by the team that created Crimson Skies for the original Xbox and all of a sudden I was much more interested in the project.

Crimson Skies is a really well made arcade style flight game and one of the few Xbox exclusives worth looking into. When I found out that Dark Void was basically The Rocketeer meets Crimson Skies, I was almost sold. Now that reviews are out it is becoming quite clear that maybe Dark Void isn’t anything special after all and that maybe my hunch was right all along. I needed to find out for myself, so I decided to download the demo.

From what I’ve played the game does seem really awesome. Flying around is practically identical to Crimson Skies, complete with the same special moves by pushing the sticks in and rolling them from side to side. It has a great sense of speed when you fire those thrusters, and the shooting feels just as satisfying as it does in Crimson Skies. Then you land and all of a sudden the game magically turns into every other cover based shooter, minus the polish of something like Uncharted from what I’ve seen. It sort of reminds me of the Gamecube game Star Wars Rebel Strike in that the air stuff was great but the land stuff was garbage. From the way reviews sound, it seems that just like Rebel Strike, the garbage outweighs the good. Jack of all trades, master of none… well I guess in these cases, one.

Gamer – inmates on death row are subjected to a game where humans control them in a war-like environment. They are guaranteed a free pardon if they win a certain number of games. Its called Slayers and the mastermind (Michael C. Hall) will do anything to keep his star player (Gerard Butler) in the game. Written and Directed by the Crank: High Voltage guys.

Surrogates – in the future, humans never leave their homes and instead live their normal lives and interact with others through surrogate robots. When someone finds out how to kill surrogates and make the human controlling them die, a cop (Bruce Willis) must venture out into the real world for the first time in years to investigate.

The Invention of Lying – Ricky Gervais plays a man who invents the first lie. In this world of complete truth telling, everyone believes anything he says. He uses this to his advantage to become rich and famous…. but will it be enough for him to get the girl of his dreams? Written and Directed by Gervais.

Welcome to my new weekly feature here on the Nerdlog. One of my 2010 resolutions was to get more content on here on a regular basis. I had been posting tons of music on Facebook via YouTube clips last year and since I deactivated my Facebook account I figure I should be posting that stuff here. So my goal is to have a new bit of music on here every monday morning.

So this week’s song is “Ashes in the Snow” by MONO. MONO is a Japanese instrumental post-rock band with a very similar sound to Scotland’s Mogwai. I recently got a copy of their album “Hymn of the Immortal Wind” and have fallen in love with the layers of sound they’ve created. “Ashes in the Snow” is the first track on the album and gives you a pretty good idea how the rest of the songs sound. If you want some cool background music while you’re working but aren’t into electronica this may be the album for you.

The Book of Eli – Its post-apocalyptic United States and Denzel Washington plays a loner fighting his way across the country in order to protect a sacred book that apparently holds the secret to saving humankind. Also starring Mila Kunis and Gary Oldman. Directed by The Hughes Brothers (From Hell).

The Lovely Bones – Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) is a teenage girl who is kidnapped and murdered by a creepy neighbor (Stanley Tucci). She gets stuck in the “in between” while she watches her parents (Mark Wahlberg & Rachel Weisz) struggle to find out what happened. Directed by Peter Jackson.

Would you believe it if I told you that Disney has recently rolled out the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers again and they’re treating it like it’s a new series? Yeah, the same one with Jason, Tommy, and the Puddy Patrol from 1993. Yes, it’s the same exact show. It has now started it’s second run Saturday mornings on ABC, along with a brand new toy line with the classic heroes. ABC has even put a spin on it “claiming” that the evil Rita Repulsa has gone back in time to destroy the original Power Rangers. Don’t believe me? Here’s a clip.

When it first came out, Power Rangers was a strange beast. In an era dominated by animated programming for children, Saban Entertainment rolled out a live action show that managed to merge Saved By the Bell and the Ninja Turtles by combining footage from Japanese sentai shows (Power Ranger shows that already existed) with their own unique live action sequences on a shoe string budget. Essentially, whenever you saw the teens walking around you were watching footage made in America, but the moment they morphed and the shit hit the fan, you were watching a Japanese television show. Needless to say, this somehow became an enormous hit that has had a new seasons for the last 17 years. While the hype may have died, Power Rangers never really did. Though with all that hype came the inevitable rip offs, and god were they freaking terrible.

Since Saban was making money hand over fist with Power Rangers, they obviously wanted to expand their brand further and make more shows just like Power Rangers. The first of which was VR Troopers, which of all the Power Ranger clones was probably the least offensive even if it did star a talking dog named Jeb. Jeb was obviously supposed to sound like Jack Nicholson, and I really don’t know what they were thinking there. The bad guy also reminds me of Dennis Hopper acting like King Koopa from the Mario movie. Such inspiration!