Yo!
Okay, quick post this time. So I got most of the Call of Duty 2 achievements over with recently, and I'm reminded of how ridiculous the game's artificial lack-of-intelligence is, especially as far as headshot recognition, and your AI teammates running DIRECTLY into the line of fire, forcing the too-far-behind checkpoint to restart on account of "Friendly fire will not be tolerated"! I'm sure the A.I. can only anticipate human reactions and movements just so much, but this is the best these games can offer?
The "Mile High Club" mission at the end of Call of Duty 4 is a perfect example of how not to program AI because of this. You're in an airplane, and you have to basically fight your way from coach, up to the cockpit, killing "terrorists," to rescue some "VIP" character. The enemies here tend to pop out in groups around corners (of which there are plenty. Airplane, remember?) spraying machine gun fire and shotgun rounds forcing you to take heavy cover behind empty passenger seats, which doesn't work since here bullets pass through things, as they would in real life, but the frustration comes from having to take cover behind what are basically oversize sponges and do the classic "spray 'n pray" to get any kills. Oh, and you only have sixty seconds to finish the level. The AI problems come from lagging-behind teammates who should be spraying ACCURATELY, nearby, and know how to lay down cover fire. Despite its various general faults, CoD2 did get one thing definitely right: I can take cover behind solid objects and the AI teammates will lay down cover fire on their own and actually clear a path in the immediate area. Allowing you some time to heal up and deal with less enemies on your way out. CoD4 tries to do this, but it seems to me to be far less effective and noticeable this time out.
Also, is it just me, or is there a "Captain Price" character in every Call of Duty game? I now know there was one in CoD2, I know there's one in Modern Warfare (number 4)... I haven't tried CoD3 yet, but that would be interesting if there was, since that would mean the Price generational line would be the first McCain generational line of video games: Completely different eras (in the Call of Duty games, 1, 2 & 3 are World War II but different theaters/battles, 4 is meant to be modern battles in Afghanistan (sorry... "the Middle East"), Azerbaijan, Ukraine & Russia), each with completely different Prices. I don't recall what their first names are, or if they're even mentioned, but here again, big surprise. At least, not as much of a surprise as if, hypothetically, Infinity Ward made another Call of Duty game, based it in Vietnam, and a spinoff franchise is developed where that Cap. Price has long since retired, and decides to run for President. Oh wait. I mean Prime Minister (the Prices are always British).
The Bottom Line: It's 2008. Visual realism can only do so much to make up for LOGICAL realism. Period.
...But that's just me.
Oh by the way, it's been recently all-but-confirmed that Call of Duty 5 will be set (yet again) in World War II. YET AGAIN. Talk about taking a step backwards! I thought CoD4 proved you can make a modern warfare game that's... MODERN, and people will buy it! Why the need to rehash WWII yet again?? You can only kill the same Nazis so many times without fatiguing your consumers.
I leave you now with a semi-disturbing video of what happens when you microwave a cell phone (DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME):
Hope you had a great Memorial Day Weekend... See you next week.
-D.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Entry 76: "R.I.P., Kids' WB..."
Yo!
I had to wait until Saturday to post this, because I want to pay homage to something. I already have this coming Monday's post ready though, so don't worry.
During much of the '90s, Saturday morning television (at least as far as the non-cable/satellite, basic networks go) was dominated by a program lineup called Kids' WB. It began around the fall of 1995, and provided something unique and genuinely interesting to look forward to once the dreaded Monday-Friday school week was over. Kids' WB was the lineup that gave us Earthworm Jim, Road Rovers, Freakazoid!, Animaniacs (once FOX was done with 'em), Pinky & the Brain (NARF!), Bruce Timm's Superman series (without which Justice League would never have happened, I promise you) and Batman Gotham Knights (which despite the timing of that show's premiere in '97, wasn't meant to follow Batman & Robin in spirit... Thankfully, there were no rubber nipples on that show), LOONEY TUNES ON WEEKDAYS, Histeria!, Men in Black (the show that got me interested in pursuing television as a career.....), Jackie Chan's cartoon series, Static Shock, The Nightmare Room (R.L. Stine's OTHER book-to-TV series), X-Men: Evolution, The Batman and many others over the last thirteen years. Kids' WB also presented the first appearance of Cartoon Network's famed action block Toonami on a network you didn't need cable to see (God, I miss that summer), and gave much of America our first exposure to Pokemon.
The heyday could arguably be traced back to 1998-2001, during which pieces of the block would air for an hour before school (7-8am), two after (3-5pm), four on Saturday (8am-Noon), and even 9am to 1pm on Chicago-based cable outlet WGN! But first the morning hour ended... Then WGN re-airs went away (Cubs/Bears/Bulls games took priority, I guess). The real beginning of the end came around December of 2006, when the final episode of Transformers Energon aired on a Friday afternoon, marking the end of weekday lineups at all. They tried to make up for it by giving 7am-8am as an extra hour on Saturday, but it wasn't the same after losing Saturday encores, morning shows, Mon-Thurs classics and Friday re-airs of stuff from the past Saturday. I suppose the local affiliates petitioned together for getting that time back to air way more Judge Joe Brown in syndication or something.
Today was the first broadcast day of "The CW 4Kids," because "Kids' CW" was somehow already taken, I guess. Five hours on Saturday mornings, nothing more, nothing less. Maybe the network heads and affiliates think people can just go to Cartoon Network (the current home of Pokemon), Nickeloden or (*shudder) ...Disney... instead of the tried-and-true network slots so many of us '90-ers grew up with, just to get some decent weekday animation. Yeah, thanks. CW4Kids marks the death of what was left of truly original, not cheesy, cookie-cutter "action" or patronizingly juvenile comedy (which even KWB had sometimes too... Loonatics or Johnny Test, anyone?).
Bottom Line: Kids' WB will be remembered by many of us for exactly what it was: A haven for quality animation. It set the standard for how all other network blocks, broadcast and cable, will be judged, in terms of quality, consistency and variety. Period. Sure, Warner relaunched KWB this week as a video-on-demand website, now in "beta" form at the original web address, http://www.kidswb.com/, but nevertheless a void has now been left that CW4K simply cannot fill appropriately thanks in no small part to the inherited lineup timeslot restrictions from KWB's final months. It will be missed. I would now like a moment of silence in honor of this influential and historic program lineup.
September 9, 1995 - May 17, 2008.
Thanks for the memories.
Don't worry... The best is yet to come...........
Later.
-D.
I had to wait until Saturday to post this, because I want to pay homage to something. I already have this coming Monday's post ready though, so don't worry.
During much of the '90s, Saturday morning television (at least as far as the non-cable/satellite, basic networks go) was dominated by a program lineup called Kids' WB. It began around the fall of 1995, and provided something unique and genuinely interesting to look forward to once the dreaded Monday-Friday school week was over. Kids' WB was the lineup that gave us Earthworm Jim, Road Rovers, Freakazoid!, Animaniacs (once FOX was done with 'em), Pinky & the Brain (NARF!), Bruce Timm's Superman series (without which Justice League would never have happened, I promise you) and Batman Gotham Knights (which despite the timing of that show's premiere in '97, wasn't meant to follow Batman & Robin in spirit... Thankfully, there were no rubber nipples on that show), LOONEY TUNES ON WEEKDAYS, Histeria!, Men in Black (the show that got me interested in pursuing television as a career.....), Jackie Chan's cartoon series, Static Shock, The Nightmare Room (R.L. Stine's OTHER book-to-TV series), X-Men: Evolution, The Batman and many others over the last thirteen years. Kids' WB also presented the first appearance of Cartoon Network's famed action block Toonami on a network you didn't need cable to see (God, I miss that summer), and gave much of America our first exposure to Pokemon.
The heyday could arguably be traced back to 1998-2001, during which pieces of the block would air for an hour before school (7-8am), two after (3-5pm), four on Saturday (8am-Noon), and even 9am to 1pm on Chicago-based cable outlet WGN! But first the morning hour ended... Then WGN re-airs went away (Cubs/Bears/Bulls games took priority, I guess). The real beginning of the end came around December of 2006, when the final episode of Transformers Energon aired on a Friday afternoon, marking the end of weekday lineups at all. They tried to make up for it by giving 7am-8am as an extra hour on Saturday, but it wasn't the same after losing Saturday encores, morning shows, Mon-Thurs classics and Friday re-airs of stuff from the past Saturday. I suppose the local affiliates petitioned together for getting that time back to air way more Judge Joe Brown in syndication or something.
Today was the first broadcast day of "The CW 4Kids," because "Kids' CW" was somehow already taken, I guess. Five hours on Saturday mornings, nothing more, nothing less. Maybe the network heads and affiliates think people can just go to Cartoon Network (the current home of Pokemon), Nickeloden or (*shudder) ...Disney... instead of the tried-and-true network slots so many of us '90-ers grew up with, just to get some decent weekday animation. Yeah, thanks. CW4Kids marks the death of what was left of truly original, not cheesy, cookie-cutter "action" or patronizingly juvenile comedy (which even KWB had sometimes too... Loonatics or Johnny Test, anyone?).
Bottom Line: Kids' WB will be remembered by many of us for exactly what it was: A haven for quality animation. It set the standard for how all other network blocks, broadcast and cable, will be judged, in terms of quality, consistency and variety. Period. Sure, Warner relaunched KWB this week as a video-on-demand website, now in "beta" form at the original web address, http://www.kidswb.com/, but nevertheless a void has now been left that CW4K simply cannot fill appropriately thanks in no small part to the inherited lineup timeslot restrictions from KWB's final months. It will be missed. I would now like a moment of silence in honor of this influential and historic program lineup.
September 9, 1995 - May 17, 2008.Thanks for the memories.
Don't worry... The best is yet to come...........
Later.
-D.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Entry 75: "Hungry Hungry Humans"
Yo!
So I'm sitting in line at the drive-thru of an "unnamed" fast-food place, and I'm behind a big, black Chevy pickup truck with a Washington Redskins bumper sticker. It then occurs to me how this country was "discovered" and the original natives were basically exiled from their own lands by people who were, to them, illegal immigrants. Making it terrifyingly ironic and almost insulting to have one of the most historic teams in the biggest sport in America, playing for the nation's capital of all places, actually named the Redskins, with the head of an indian chief as their logo. Matter of fact, I'm starting to look at most things differently in such a proudly American sport as football that relate to the Native Americans in general. That's right, I'm looking at you, Kansas City.
It's just a thought. Please don't send the "America-hater" comments.
Anyway...
Last week saw an explosion of news about the ever-daunting food shortage crisis sweeping the planet. Food Banks all over are starting to run low on supplies... Here's the short version of the story, if you somehow haven't heard about it already by now: Arguably the four biggest sources of this problem come from the ever-ascending gasoline prices, desperation to halt global warming by switching to corn-based ethanol fuels to run our cars, poor farming harvests no doubt influenced by global warming, and a blockage in global trade, forcing food (among other goods) prices to go up.
So about the corn-based ethanol, it seemed like a good idea at the time, right? Except apparently most of us didn't think through to what would happen by moving all those crops from our stomachs to our Sentras. Naturally, crops reserved for human consumption are becoming more and more scarce as we try to convert the corn to ethanol instead, since it's extremely important to have that full tank of fuel, even at the risk of passing out on the highway at 70mph due to exhaustion and malnutrition. Also, don't forget we need a lot of those crops to feed the animals we're eating, predominantly cows, chickens and pigs. Sure, in the slavery era, the slaves used to eat stuff like chitlins, but because it was a survival technique, foraging off of 'massah' for the garbage parts of the animal. Nobody's supposed to eat pig intestines (or feet, or snouts for that matter). However, I can think of only several hundred million people who'd kill for a piece of that intestine nowadays, and that's no joke. So no more Whoppers and Big Macs, sorry. Especially if we're to save those precious carbon dioxide converting trees that are being cut down for space to raise more cattle, only to be sent through the grinder to feed us. I won't lie, I do have chicken sometimes, but at least I know it takes much less land and resources to raise chickens than whole cows. Oh, but there's that whole bird flu thing, on the other hand.
It's lonely at the top of the food chain, isn't it?
Then there's global warming. Where do I begin there? Yeah, you got the emissions from our cars, the air pollution from factories, and of course the methane gas from the cows belching and farting. But did we really think ethanol was going to single-handedly stop, or even really slow the process? Especially when there are so many other sources of different kinds of pollution adding to the problem. Let's not forget the factories in China, Japan and Taiwan that are manufacturing all the stuff we buy at Wal-Mart and Target, for example, that are themselves putting out emissions too. Although, since the planet rotates counter-clockwise, none of the Asian factory smog hits our American west coast first (which might have explained Los Angeles' smoggy skyline, right?), but rather Europe and North Africa, then us.
The electric car was supposed to be our big saving grace, but what happened? Oh that's right, the low average mileage at the time of peak interest (2006), lack of consumer interest and the California Air Resources Board caving to pressure from the oil and auto industries to repeal the zero-emissions mandate of 1990, for starters. Then Hybrid cars were at the top. Honda's Insight and Toyota's Prius were meant to be the universal transition cars everyone was supposed to have, or a similar hybrid, to begin the process of getting us off of fossil fuels. Then the same problems started to hit, low consumer interest, etc. Although, suspiciously, not as much as with the 100% electrics..... In any case, now the hybrid seems to be becoming rarer than an Obama supporter who still sympathizes with Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
I could go on for hours about the reasons why this food shortage is happening, but what can be done? It's all about the gas prices. Yesterday after work, I gassed up at a station that had on their sign $3.57/gallon unleaded. As I was pumping I noticed the guy who changes the price walking out to the sign to increase it again to $3.62/gal. After I was done, I walked over and found out all the gas price changes happen outside before the computers are updated if it's a decrease in price, and in the computers before it's outside at the sign if it's an increase. Which means I was one of the last people in my area of Virginia to gas up for under $3.60/gal. Never thought I'd see the day when paying over $3.50/gal for gas could be linked with lucky timing, in any sense of the phrase, since my pump was still locked on $3.57 instead of $3.62. Never say never, I guess. Back to the point, it's the DIESEL prices that are causing this particular crisis. My station earlier had about $4.40/gal for Diesel (before the guy went out). Those prices go up, it suddenly costs more money for the distributor companies to ship food and other goods around in their DIESEL semis, and the crap flows downhill to us. Those companies need their money back to offset the increase and the most cost-effective way to do that is by making their own customers fork over the difference.
Bottom Line: Can this crisis really end? I mean, we can do all the "green" stuff to stop global warming (hopefully), but we'll always need food. We'll also always procreate (woo-hoo!), and the increase in global population means once that new population is too old for Similac, it'll just make the need for food and resources worse. In the first Matrix movie, Agent Smith calls humankind at large a disease upon planet Earth, since we do behave like a disease or a parasite. It is in our nature to conquer and consume, and when all available resources have been exhausted, we move on to the next possible host. Speaking of, I hear our newest Mars colonization project has been making some progress lately...
Oh, by the way, I found out Tesla Motors recently started regular production on the Roadster, an electric sports car that runs entirely on Lithium-Ion batteries and pulls 0-60mph in four seconds. I just hope its mileage defies conventional sports cars & SUVs and does better than four miles to the watt. Oh, wait. 135mpg equivalent, you say? Well, solar panel spoilers wouldn't hurt......
...But that's just me.
See you next week.
-D.
So I'm sitting in line at the drive-thru of an "unnamed" fast-food place, and I'm behind a big, black Chevy pickup truck with a Washington Redskins bumper sticker. It then occurs to me how this country was "discovered" and the original natives were basically exiled from their own lands by people who were, to them, illegal immigrants. Making it terrifyingly ironic and almost insulting to have one of the most historic teams in the biggest sport in America, playing for the nation's capital of all places, actually named the Redskins, with the head of an indian chief as their logo. Matter of fact, I'm starting to look at most things differently in such a proudly American sport as football that relate to the Native Americans in general. That's right, I'm looking at you, Kansas City.
It's just a thought. Please don't send the "America-hater" comments.
Anyway...
Last week saw an explosion of news about the ever-daunting food shortage crisis sweeping the planet. Food Banks all over are starting to run low on supplies... Here's the short version of the story, if you somehow haven't heard about it already by now: Arguably the four biggest sources of this problem come from the ever-ascending gasoline prices, desperation to halt global warming by switching to corn-based ethanol fuels to run our cars, poor farming harvests no doubt influenced by global warming, and a blockage in global trade, forcing food (among other goods) prices to go up.
So about the corn-based ethanol, it seemed like a good idea at the time, right? Except apparently most of us didn't think through to what would happen by moving all those crops from our stomachs to our Sentras. Naturally, crops reserved for human consumption are becoming more and more scarce as we try to convert the corn to ethanol instead, since it's extremely important to have that full tank of fuel, even at the risk of passing out on the highway at 70mph due to exhaustion and malnutrition. Also, don't forget we need a lot of those crops to feed the animals we're eating, predominantly cows, chickens and pigs. Sure, in the slavery era, the slaves used to eat stuff like chitlins, but because it was a survival technique, foraging off of 'massah' for the garbage parts of the animal. Nobody's supposed to eat pig intestines (or feet, or snouts for that matter). However, I can think of only several hundred million people who'd kill for a piece of that intestine nowadays, and that's no joke. So no more Whoppers and Big Macs, sorry. Especially if we're to save those precious carbon dioxide converting trees that are being cut down for space to raise more cattle, only to be sent through the grinder to feed us. I won't lie, I do have chicken sometimes, but at least I know it takes much less land and resources to raise chickens than whole cows. Oh, but there's that whole bird flu thing, on the other hand.
It's lonely at the top of the food chain, isn't it?
Then there's global warming. Where do I begin there? Yeah, you got the emissions from our cars, the air pollution from factories, and of course the methane gas from the cows belching and farting. But did we really think ethanol was going to single-handedly stop, or even really slow the process? Especially when there are so many other sources of different kinds of pollution adding to the problem. Let's not forget the factories in China, Japan and Taiwan that are manufacturing all the stuff we buy at Wal-Mart and Target, for example, that are themselves putting out emissions too. Although, since the planet rotates counter-clockwise, none of the Asian factory smog hits our American west coast first (which might have explained Los Angeles' smoggy skyline, right?), but rather Europe and North Africa, then us.
The electric car was supposed to be our big saving grace, but what happened? Oh that's right, the low average mileage at the time of peak interest (2006), lack of consumer interest and the California Air Resources Board caving to pressure from the oil and auto industries to repeal the zero-emissions mandate of 1990, for starters. Then Hybrid cars were at the top. Honda's Insight and Toyota's Prius were meant to be the universal transition cars everyone was supposed to have, or a similar hybrid, to begin the process of getting us off of fossil fuels. Then the same problems started to hit, low consumer interest, etc. Although, suspiciously, not as much as with the 100% electrics..... In any case, now the hybrid seems to be becoming rarer than an Obama supporter who still sympathizes with Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
I could go on for hours about the reasons why this food shortage is happening, but what can be done? It's all about the gas prices. Yesterday after work, I gassed up at a station that had on their sign $3.57/gallon unleaded. As I was pumping I noticed the guy who changes the price walking out to the sign to increase it again to $3.62/gal. After I was done, I walked over and found out all the gas price changes happen outside before the computers are updated if it's a decrease in price, and in the computers before it's outside at the sign if it's an increase. Which means I was one of the last people in my area of Virginia to gas up for under $3.60/gal. Never thought I'd see the day when paying over $3.50/gal for gas could be linked with lucky timing, in any sense of the phrase, since my pump was still locked on $3.57 instead of $3.62. Never say never, I guess. Back to the point, it's the DIESEL prices that are causing this particular crisis. My station earlier had about $4.40/gal for Diesel (before the guy went out). Those prices go up, it suddenly costs more money for the distributor companies to ship food and other goods around in their DIESEL semis, and the crap flows downhill to us. Those companies need their money back to offset the increase and the most cost-effective way to do that is by making their own customers fork over the difference.
Bottom Line: Can this crisis really end? I mean, we can do all the "green" stuff to stop global warming (hopefully), but we'll always need food. We'll also always procreate (woo-hoo!), and the increase in global population means once that new population is too old for Similac, it'll just make the need for food and resources worse. In the first Matrix movie, Agent Smith calls humankind at large a disease upon planet Earth, since we do behave like a disease or a parasite. It is in our nature to conquer and consume, and when all available resources have been exhausted, we move on to the next possible host. Speaking of, I hear our newest Mars colonization project has been making some progress lately...
Oh, by the way, I found out Tesla Motors recently started regular production on the Roadster, an electric sports car that runs entirely on Lithium-Ion batteries and pulls 0-60mph in four seconds. I just hope its mileage defies conventional sports cars & SUVs and does better than four miles to the watt. Oh, wait. 135mpg equivalent, you say? Well, solar panel spoilers wouldn't hurt......
...But that's just me.
See you next week.
-D.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Entry 74: "Leaving a Harvey Dent in Summer"
Yo!
I forgot to clarify something in the last post. When I mentioned "that upcoming Bat-series," I apparently forgot to paste in a link to that press release explaining what that was. FYI, there will be yet another Batman cartoon called The Brave & the Bold. HERE's the link. They'll explain everything.
By the way! At long last, Grand Theft Auto IV was released last week! Millions of Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 owners did not move from their couches those first few days! Legs fell asleep, in abundance!! Once again, Rockstar North has created a monster. Some frame rate and aiming issues though, and the targeting reticle (sorry, targeting molecule) is entirely too small. Please consider patching somehow. (customize reticle size...?)
...But, that game is not the focus of this post.
So the third trailer for Batman Continues, also known as The Dark Knight, arrived online
Sunday. Director Christopher Nolan, resuming his mission to clean up Joel Schumacher's mess, once again does not disappoint. Observe the Gotham-y goodness that is trailer numero trés:
Now, around the 2:04 mark, you'll see a brief glimpse of Aaron Eckhart's good side (get it?), but on this screencap, pay attention to the left side of his face:
The reason this is significant is because great pains have been taken by the production staff to make Two-Face's full appearance a mystery, as far as how bad the damage is. Easier typed than done, given all the message boards, fansites and not to mention entertainment blogs like this that salivate over the occasional out-of-focus camera phone photo you then wish you hadn't seen. Because seeing the official image isn't as surprising anymore. But then you remember this preview image of one of the official tie-in action figures we're probably gonna see a lot of Saturday morning ads for next month:
Now, let's compare:
Also, it seems like Nolan's rebooting all the Batman villains for his movies as cold and calculating, not petty criminals or Joe Everylawyers who were victims of circumstance and went a little crazy after the fact. After the first preview screening of trailer one, revealing Heath Ledger's version, I recall a comparison to the other Jokers in Batman history, in particular Jack Nicholson's version, which was humorously likened to the proverbial "drunken grandpa" of the Batman universe. Maybe it's just me, but after seeing a little more of SpongeHarv District-Attorney-Pants (I ran out of nicknames, sorry), I'm starting to look at Batman Forever a little differently too. Tommy Lee Jones' version of Two-Face was acting just as verbally loopy and clownish at times, almost out-crazying Jim Carrey at certain points, which is no small feat.
Oh, and what's this? Here's a special image that's been making the rounds across the net since yesterday (hold onto your lunch):
Right side's indifferent, modestly regular. Left side's Imhotep, medium rare.
Bottom Line: Even though the validity of the above image is yet to be confirmed, even as a leaked copy of early concept art (if it's real, that's gonna be seriously heavy CG, what with the removing of that eyelid, cheek and ear), it looks like Nolan and company are on the right track. They obviously may never get people to the theaters to see Eckhart's psychological tailspin into Two-Face to set up Batman 7, as Chris Nolan wanted, instead of seeing the film solely because of Heath Ledger. But as long as the checks clear and especially if they can live up to the over a hundred million dollars generated by Iron Man over the weekend, It's safe to say nobody at WB is gonna be crying a river anytime soon.
...But that's just me.
Mark those calendars. June 18. Later.
-D.
I forgot to clarify something in the last post. When I mentioned "that upcoming Bat-series," I apparently forgot to paste in a link to that press release explaining what that was. FYI, there will be yet another Batman cartoon called The Brave & the Bold. HERE's the link. They'll explain everything.
By the way! At long last, Grand Theft Auto IV was released last week! Millions of Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 owners did not move from their couches those first few days! Legs fell asleep, in abundance!! Once again, Rockstar North has created a monster. Some frame rate and aiming issues though, and the targeting reticle (sorry, targeting molecule) is entirely too small. Please consider patching somehow. (customize reticle size...?)
...But, that game is not the focus of this post.
So the third trailer for Batman Continues, also known as The Dark Knight, arrived online
Sunday. Director Christopher Nolan, resuming his mission to clean up Joel Schumacher's mess, once again does not disappoint. Observe the Gotham-y goodness that is trailer numero trés:
Now, around the 2:04 mark, you'll see a brief glimpse of Aaron Eckhart's good side (get it?), but on this screencap, pay attention to the left side of his face:
The reason this is significant is because great pains have been taken by the production staff to make Two-Face's full appearance a mystery, as far as how bad the damage is. Easier typed than done, given all the message boards, fansites and not to mention entertainment blogs like this that salivate over the occasional out-of-focus camera phone photo you then wish you hadn't seen. Because seeing the official image isn't as surprising anymore. But then you remember this preview image of one of the official tie-in action figures we're probably gonna see a lot of Saturday morning ads for next month:
Now, let's compare:
Also, it seems like Nolan's rebooting all the Batman villains for his movies as cold and calculating, not petty criminals or Joe Everylawyers who were victims of circumstance and went a little crazy after the fact. After the first preview screening of trailer one, revealing Heath Ledger's version, I recall a comparison to the other Jokers in Batman history, in particular Jack Nicholson's version, which was humorously likened to the proverbial "drunken grandpa" of the Batman universe. Maybe it's just me, but after seeing a little more of SpongeHarv District-Attorney-Pants (I ran out of nicknames, sorry), I'm starting to look at Batman Forever a little differently too. Tommy Lee Jones' version of Two-Face was acting just as verbally loopy and clownish at times, almost out-crazying Jim Carrey at certain points, which is no small feat.
Oh, and what's this? Here's a special image that's been making the rounds across the net since yesterday (hold onto your lunch):
Right side's indifferent, modestly regular. Left side's Imhotep, medium rare.
Bottom Line: Even though the validity of the above image is yet to be confirmed, even as a leaked copy of early concept art (if it's real, that's gonna be seriously heavy CG, what with the removing of that eyelid, cheek and ear), it looks like Nolan and company are on the right track. They obviously may never get people to the theaters to see Eckhart's psychological tailspin into Two-Face to set up Batman 7, as Chris Nolan wanted, instead of seeing the film solely because of Heath Ledger. But as long as the checks clear and especially if they can live up to the over a hundred million dollars generated by Iron Man over the weekend, It's safe to say nobody at WB is gonna be crying a river anytime soon.
...But that's just me.
Mark those calendars. June 18. Later.
-D.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
