Review: John Carter (of Mars!)

There's been a lot of recent jibber-jabber about how Disney's classic sci-fi epic John Carter is a massive box office failure, with little chance of recovering its enormous $250 million budget. The film is performing far better overseas, but American audiences don't seem to want to give the film a chance, perhaps assuming that expressive CGI aliens and arena battles will re-open Star Wars prequel wounds? Personally, I find this reticence to be a little bit silly.

I've previously defended at least the concept of John Carter because in my mind, why wouldn't you at least give the film the benefit of the doubt? It's the live-action directorial debut of Pixar legend Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo and Wall-E) and - not only is it based on classic literature - but it's about a grizzled wild west dude who gets super powers on Mars and beats the holy living shit out of a white ape. Who wouldn't want to see that? Sissies and babies, I'll wager.

Well, now I have actually seen the film with my own unwaivering eyes and can speak about it with knowledge and wisdom instead of wild speculation and bravado. What did I think? Join me after the (ridiculously high space) jump and all will be revealed!...

Clone Wars Recap S4 E22: Revenge (Finale!)

Season Four of the increasingly ambitious Clone Wars has finally reached its end with the long promised return of short-lived, neatly-sliced, fan-favourite Darth Maul. At the end of last week's episode Brothers we got our first look at how insane and twisted the cobbled together Spider-Maul had become, and now this week's show aims to give us a scant 22 minutes of Maul's actual revenge on a floppy-haired Kenobi.

Will it live up to the hype? Join me after the jump where I will regale you with the truth...

By George It's Metal!

Is it October yet?

Luke brought up the game Bioshock: Infinite as one of the ones he was looking forward to when we were discussing the very few games that we had in our scopes for 2012. The Bioshock series has been a ton of fun for me, certainly, and I may be one of the few people who actually liked Bioshock 2 more than the first game.

Certainly, it looks by all accounts that all of us will be enjoying this newest installment in the series, come Fall, even though it has very little if nothing at all to do with Rapture. In essence, toweling off and soaring amidst the clouds looks like it might be fun.

I hope they do eventually plan to return to Rapture someday however...I don't feel that the place has had its story completely told. Something does not feel...complete.

This city in the clouds holds some promise though...I am a bit torn on this Motorized Patriot. I have not decided yet if I absolutely love it or not.




I'll let you know.

OUT.

Friday night videoclips

I am having trouble writing something about this

Oh and there are more... so many more

Lucha!

Keeping up with the wrassling posts here are some animation shorts by Yann Ben Alluch

Vote For O.M.F.G. Figures Series 2!

I've already talked at length about October Toy's brilliant O.M.F.G. figures, a tribute to the bizarre flesh-coloured mini-mutant M.U.S.C.L.E figures of the eighties. After a successful Kickstarter project, series one brought us memorable characters like The Phantom Shithouse and the Crawdad Kid. Well, the good news is that now the good folks at October have compiled over 400 design submissions for a second series and you get to vote for which ones you think should be included.

All the action is happening on the October Toys Forum in the voting thread here, and this link where you can see all of the submissions (VERY image heavy).

But now I have to make this all about me, right? So here are the five that I am voting for, starting with...

To see my remaining four choices, join me after the jump!

Counterpoint: Ric Flair was the Worst

While Tom makes a good case for Ric Flair's legend status in his post yesterday, I submit the above video as evidence that Ric Flair was, in fact, the worst. While we can look back at our childhoods and wonder why we were ever dumb enough to think that, say, the Undertaker was actually being controlled by a fat dude with an urn, I watch the video above of Ric Flair auditioning for World Cup-level soccer and wonder why I ever believed wrestling was truly real to begin with.

A bad flop here and there is fine - these guys perform at a high physical level on a regular basis. But Ric Flair actively made this part of his act. This is bad on so many levels, and really a poke in the eye of the guys who went out there and took their roles in the wrestling world seriously even though they were playing over-the-top characters in completely unrealistic situations.

It's stunning to me that the WWF/E and WCW never reined this in. Of course, Flair may have been too big a personality to be held back, but, really? This is the worst.

Thank GIF it's Friday

My mostly animal-based GIFs have taken a turn for the weird.

Diablo 3 - WE HAVE AN ETA

May 15th, people. MAY FIFTEENTH. Let this post be the formal notification of my disappearance from the internet, my family, and my place of work for at least a year.

Interestingly this news dropped whilst I was playing World of Warcraft, and you can believe  that tradechat went ballistic. This is going to be EPIC, GUYS. Stay tuned for a very-much-related post regarding a certain wonderful item of D3 merchandise that I recieved for my birthday.

I AM SO GOD-DAMNED EXCITED.

Bootleg Street Fighter Figures!

I picked up these bootleg Street Fighter figures last year and they've been sitting in my garage since. The packaging is super awesome, but I decided to finally free them of their cardbacks and let them do what they're meant to do... FIGHT!

Want to see them out of the package? Click through the jump for images of all 8, including a very special image for our very own Luke Milton (and all of the other Chun-Li worshippers out there). I know that Luke doesn't like when Chun-Li doesn't show her legs. Well, these bootleg figures don't mess around... You'll see.