Darcy's Scott Pilgrim vs The World Review

If your a bit of a nerd who likes comics and you remembers the old Nintendo glory days with some nostalgia your going to like and possibly love this movie. In short, if the topics of this blog interest you then you will likely truly enjoy the Scott Pilgrim movie.

I unlike most of my fellow WoW playing, comic reading, Nintendo worshiping brothers and sisters really wasn't overly excited about Scott Pilgrim. I don't like real life inspired comics and that's what I had always assumed the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels were until, A Comic Book Orange, set me straight. By the way, Casey McKinnon, please bring us more. I'm having A Comic Book Orange withdrawal and really miss your web series cuteness. Anyway, back on topic. The only real life inspired comic I ever enjoyed reading was Hate by Peter Bagge.
Hate was an amusing satire of the culture of the early 90s and after watching Scott Pilgrim I'm willing to bet the real life inspired aspects of that comic satire today's emo/alternative culture in a similar manner while combining video game inspired battles with evil exes. Alas I can't review the comic because I never read it so let us return to the movie.

Not having read the comic wasn't the only reason I wasn't to sure about the movie. The fact that Michael Cera starred as Scott Piligrim made me nervous. I have nothing against him as an actor and he does a good job as a side character but I've never saw him as a lead in any movie that I would have enjoyed.

I also wasn't sure about tying in the video game action in a movie. I can't help but think of the movie The Beach and it's Pitfall scene and shake my head. Google and Bing don't seem to return me any video links for that scene so your gonna have to trust me it was brutally bad and added the shit icing to a shitty movie.

Now having said all that the trailers for Scott Pilgrim look awesome and everyone raved about the comic books so I thought either this is going to be really good or it's going to suck. Typically when I think that, the movie sucks so I wasn't in a rush to go see it in theaters. However, I go to a movie every other weekend with my daughter and she really wanted to see it so I said why not and off we went.

Well this movie surprised me and I really enjoyed it. Apparently, I could totally related to the culture satire and characters in the movie could easily have been people I hung out with in University. The campy video game alternate reality just worked and I can't think of anyone other than Michael Cera who could have played Scott Piligrim ... well maybe Aaron Johnson from Kick Ass but I don't think he would have been as good. All in all I'm willing to bet that this will definitely be one of my favorite movies this year and for a while going forward.

Cheers

Having said that the movie trailers looked amazing so I was of the opinion that either this movie will work and be awesome or will suck balls. and has never been my favorite actor. He's okay as a side character but I could not see him

Bioshock 3

Well not quite, but close enough for reality. What we're looking at here is Irrational Games releasing not only the title but a trailer for a new game slated for 2012 release; formally known as Project Icarus, this new game will be titled Bioshock: Infinities. Checkout the cool trailer:

In a nutshell, here's what we know and is either hinted at or told in the trailer: It's very early in the 20th century (about 1910), the setting is a floating city/weapon of mass destruction, and you need to rescue a girl from a large armored creature. They also seem to be building on or expanding on the society is inherently corrupt themes that the first game gave us, but from more of a governmental aspect this time. Some really cool ideas.

Now I'm not going to get all carried away with gushing over this but it does look like they're going to be implementing a lot of the Bioshock mechanics and modify the atmosphere for the new world they've created. Will it work out? Maybe. The atmosphere is the thing that bothers me the most about this; Bioshock was one of the most solid shooters I've ever played, but it really wouldn't have been anything special if it hadn't been for the setting, a giant city/tomb underwater populated with insane drug addicts. They masterfully mingled the real pressures of surviving with the pressure of water overhead with an era that most people remember fondly, giving a tense nail biter of a world. I'm not saying that they can't do something similar, but I'm a bit leery about it.

While it is a little early to be making judgments, there is a lot of creative development that is going to take place in the next two years, most likely crushing a lot of good ideas, but I think this is a good direction. I'm hoping for a better game the Bioshock expansion pack, otherwise known as Bioshock 2. While a good solid game it didn't bring anything new or diverse to the world, whereas Infinities looks like it has the potential to deliver this and more.

Avengers Movie

While this is still a ways away I can't help but get a little caught up int he excitement of it. Marvel has been doing a spectacular job with their movies lately and the up coming ones are looking to be on the same vein (Captain America and Thor).

We recently found out that Joss Whedon is going to be directing the movie and I think I'm happy with that. I'm not a total fanboy, but I have enjoyed most of the stuff he has been responsible for creating; the only thing I haven't had a full appreciation for would be his X-Men writing, having never been an X-person/group fan I never read any of it. Having said that, I fully respect that it may also be good, but Serenity and Firefly are pretty good endorsements on their own.

The bigger thing that got me interested though was the possibility of the Infinity Gauntlet being the main plot point. Now this is very likely a leading rumor just to throw people of the scent of the real plot, but in my opinion this would be the very, absolute best thing for the movie. It would probably also mean the inclusion of Thanos as the villain, how cool would that be?

It's very likely we won't ever see the gauntlet or Thanos, but it will still probably be a good movie. And who knows, sometimes cool shit happens.

The Walking Dead: TV Show

I've known for a few months now that AMC was creating an ongoing TV show for The Walking Dead but as I have never watched anything made by AMC, although I do enjoy their movie programming, and they had only signed for 6 episodes I didn't hold much hope for it in general.

In the recently wrapped up Sand Diego Comic Convention there was a trailer put out for the show, and I'm starting to look forward to October when the show is released. It's a pretty crumby recording, but it looks like they're doing some good work on the show:

I've only been following the comic for the last year, but in that time I took it upon myself to read everything they put out, going so far as to buy the monstrous compendium encompassing the first 48 issues in one book. Long story short, I love the comic and the trailer seems to be indicating that they have kept what's good and expanded what they needed to to make the tv show work; I've been wrong before, but this trailer looks promising to me.

I'll definitely be checking this one out when it hits the air. Never thought about it before, but thats an anachronism isn't it? Guess I should be saying "I'll definitely be checking this one out when it hits the Ethernet."

Dead Rising 2: Special Edition

As time goes on I'm actually looking forward to this game less and less; they changed the main character, a new development company who has only worked on sports games doing the coding, Capcom feeling the first game was "too Japanese", and, most of all, what appears to be a major shift to mutiplayer and co-op game play. In short, they seem to be doing everything they can to change everything that made the first game good (don't even get me started on the save system).

Having said all that I'm still looking forward to giving this game a go, and the special edition that is being released has got me a little excited, more details here, but I'll throw in a screenshot for good measure too:

Personally, I love the Zombrex hypo that is actually a pen. At 79.99 it seems a little steep, but consider that fact that it'll take at least 60, and probably 70, bucks to purchase the regular edition, I don't mind paying a few extra bucks to get some cool toys.

If nothing else it'll at least serve as a tribute to the memory of the first game, one of the finest works of video game art ever conceived of by Human civilization.