Adult Swim's annual April Fool's prank, a highlight for cult viewers of the late night cartoon channel, left viewers distraught by the pitiful joke of simply putting cat head's super imposed over people's faces. Last year so the prank of Toonami coming back, which sparked it's actual resurgence. Using that same power tonight Adult Swim did not over do itself. Fans online have been saddened by Adult Swim's general lack of creativity.
I myself wonder if some interns were just let to put together this years April Fool's prank. This night will be remembered as a let down and not like the classic night of farts a few years back. That was when farts were added to a very serious episode of Ghost in the Shell dealing with terrorism.
No way!!!!!!!!!!
Starting April 13th Disneyland is getting Tony Stark’s Hall of Armor with real set pieces from the Iron Man 3 film. You'll be able to virtually put on the armor and fire repulsor blasts. No idea what that looks like, there are no pictures of what the place looks like or any mock ups so far. This seems like a great treat for Iron Man fans as the new film will already be open when Iron Man 3 opens May 13.
I'll have more on how everything works as updates come out.
-I wish Marvel set some set props to WonderCon it was right next door to Disneyland.
WonderCon had some great goodies this year. Above is what I attained this year, my only qualm is missing out on the Lost Planet 3 mini-plushies, THEY WENT FAST. Capcom had a huge section of free posters they gave out anyway.
Fear Net had a photo booth with the lovely lasses.
The Bubble ship from Oblivion was on display.
Super 7 has done it again with Alien figures based on the prototype designs for the never released action figures due out in August. Alien collectible Burger King like cups will be on sale in June and can purchased at Comic-Con.
What would WonderCon be without it's superheroes? The strangest part might be Marvel not having a booth up and with it's corporate master Disneyland being so close. D-23 the Disney Convention had props from Marvel films in the same convention center months back. Would have it been that hard for Marvel to show some support for its fans?
DC had a huge turnout, there were plenty of Avengers, but no Avengers set pieces to stand nearby.
Here's my first round of posts from WonderCon 2013 still going on at the Anaheim Convention Center this Sunday. First up as much Adventure Time cosplay I could take. You couldn't walk far with out seeing a Finn hat in the crowd on Saturday.
Remember how I just reported on the Hero Complex Film Festival coming back this May? Well, Geoff Boucher, former head of Hero Complex moving to Entertainment Weekly and taking the reigns has created the
Entertainment Weekly CapeTown Festival
4/30- 5/6
Egyptian Theatre
Whose digging the poster?
Details go up April 4 and then then the tickets April 8th, no official site is up as I write this. I'll be sure to update you with all the goodies. Get tickets early, Hero Complex use to sell out and I have no doubt this will too.
You can now say you leave in film nerd nirvana. We already get so many special screenings, but now two nerd film fests a few weeks from each other, just too great! The Cape Town festival will cover superhero to just classic beloved fan films
What info out so far is a special screening of Escape from New York with a Q and A with Kurt Russel at the Egyptian May 3 . I hope Geoff asks him his feelings to how bad the Thing prequel was.
-A free preview presentation of the season three premiere of Falling Skies, TNT
-Return of the Jedi on Star Wars day (Star Wars Day?) Saturday, May 4. It will play four times, you know the actors in it might show up, details to come.
-Rumors of an Iron Man 3, both Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. came by for Hero Complex and the film comes out in May.
Best part to me, not at LA Live just like Hero Complex.
It's just such a bad place to do anything. Great theater there, but
parking and dining are ridiculous and there's nothing to do near by.
X Lanes is opening in May, no date has been given, but will have a bowling alley back in Little Tokyo with plenty of arcade units. I'll be sure to remind you when it up and running. There is talk of changing Little Tokyo Galleria to look nicer and have more restaurants with no time line in place via
I have yet to play Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon, but some people have issues with the multiplayer. Why not get other Mario characters other than Luigi to help during multiplayer? Why, because it's funny.
IAM8BIT and Nintendo invested time in a documentary about making Luigi's ghost vacuum the Poltergust 5000. Yes, it's odd. I hope the vacuum is at WonderCon or is at least being demoed there. It is a great replica that many wish to be a high ranking Club Nintendo reward. Not liking Jon's new look , where's the glasses and hat man?
Did anyone else figure out the DuckTales remastered commercial was from IAM8BIT?
I'll be covering the Adventure Time panel this Saturday at WonderCon. There always fun for the fans. No idea who of the cast and crew is coming, it's always a gamble. I should have some great photos from the event so stay tuned.
Special edition covers by JJ Harrison for Adventure Time Comics that evoke and old school feel. Only 500 covers were made for each character. "The layout is a throwback to the old Marvel anniversary covers of the 80s."-JJ
A Beemo figure made to look like it works with the game boy camera and printer. I still kind of woner why there was no super special edition of the 3DS made to look like Beemo for the Adventure Time game launch.
According to the FBI, Christian Gerhartsreiter came to the United States from Germany as a student in the late 1970's. In the 2008 video embedded below, he tells NBC reporter Natalie Morales that he doesn't remember that but has some recollections of growing up in America. He claims he believed his name to be Clark Rockefeller, and that it was given to him by "the one person to whom [he] always looked up, the one person [he's] known since [he] was small." The biggest mystery is why Morales doesn't ask who the Name Bestower is.
Gerhartsreiter is currently on trial in Los Angeles for the murder of John Sohus, the adult son of his landlady back in San Marino in 1985. Back then he was going by the name Christopher Chichester, which, like Rockefeller, also had a dubious connection to fame; Sir Francis Chichester was a renowned yachtsman.
Susan Coffman, a close friend of Sohus' wife, Linda, testified that she had planned to attend a science fiction convention with the now missing woman. Linda called Susan one day to say the couple were going to New York for some kind of secret government job John had got but would be back in time for the convention. That was the last time she spoke to either of them, though she received a postcard from Paris ostensibly from her friend. The prosecution claims Gerhartsreiter got someone in Europe to send out postcards to maintain the illusion of John and Linda Sohus still being alive, while the defense claims Linda may have sent the postcards herself to maintain the slightly different illusion that she had not murdered her husband and fled the country. Another witness said that she had similarly received a postcard from Gerhartsreiter years before that, which somehow came from England where he claimed to live, despite residing in Los Angeles at the time.
A San Marino officer visited Gerhartsreiter to question him soon after the disappearances and says the man answered the door nude and refused to put clothes on, claiming to be a nudist. According to another officer, who talked to the missing man's mother, Gerhartsreiter's landlady, she was convinced that her son and daughter-in-law were away on some kind of top secret mission.
Gerhartsreiter left a few months later, allegedly using the new aliases Christopher Crowe and Clark Rockefeller on the East Coast.
In 1994, however, a team preparing the Sohus' backyard for a pool found John's body.
In the Today Show segment from 2008, Gerhartsreiter was already in jail for kidnapping his daughter.
This is a developing story, as new information comes out during the proceedings, so expect more oddness to come, like Gerhartsreiter's Japanese ex-girlfriend who for some reason decided to stay with him for years, even after receiving a call from police looking for him, which he told her was a ploy by people looking to harm both him and his parents. Apparently she accepted this and went on the run with him. She says he changed his name to Rockefeller when they passed through Camden, Maine, because the Rockefellers were known to stay there and got special treatment.
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The Daily Beast has the strange story of a murder trial with no body. Lyle Herring is standing trial for the murder of his wife, Lesley, who has been missing for four years. He claims that they had planned to take a trip to Mexico without informing friends, family, or work, but she disappeared after they had a fight. He went ahead to Mexico to see if she had done likewise and, according to a real estate agent, to pass himself off as a millionaire interested in buying a nightclub.
He apparently put a coffee receipt in Lesley's purse to confuse the police, which was discovered because Starbucks had him on video making the purchase. His web search history reportedly shows only mundane phrases like "Which Country Do I Flee to?" and "Do I need a passport?" [Note: "Which Country Do I Flee to?" is given as a website but the Daily Beast is, surprisingly, the one and only search result for the phrase on both Google and Bing.]
This article is also notable for the revelation that the Los Angeles County Coroners Department has a cadaver dog named Indiana Bones.
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The Machine of Death Kickstarter mystery goals were revealed, and the numbers 826 refer to a partnership with local non-profit "dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write." 826LA's Time Travel Mart will carry the game and host a Machine of Death event on June 2nd in Mar Vista (which, if you were planning to Google, is near Culver City).
Bioshock Infinite achieves a high level of success in categories of story telling, action, gameplay and science fiction. It never fails to be an entertaining vision from Kevin Levine. The real story is about a girl, Elizabeth and she matters more than anything in the world to you by the end of the game. A wonderful look back at America's history that transforms into something the Japanese might do, creating whole mythologies and video games about past emperors and in or case presidents. It seems like a current trend with Assassin's Creed 3, Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, and Deadpool's first story arc by Brian Posehn that explore a fictional American history or brings back the presidents as a joke. Having so much, it's not the Bioshock I wanted, spiritual successor has no better meaning than this title.
You start off as Booker De Witt, a New Yorker who doesn't have an annoying New York accent, good for us. You find yourself having to pay off a sizable debt and must head off for Columbia, a floating cityscape. Garsh, it's beautiful and I want post cards. It will probably win some online poll for places to visit in a video game. So many video game worlds have had floating land masses and platforms with no reason behind them, but instead of no explanation you have a back story and science fiction. Columbia started off as a flying warship fleet and became a city that succedded from the US. Columbia may have succeeded, but it worships the founding fathers like G-ds. It turned past presidents into Micky Mouse characters with caricatures of them all over the city.
Infinite becomes dark. Such a city of light and the commercial exploits of George Washington grabs you as things go wrong and questions of morality are asked in just a few minutes after seeing such an amazing floating wonderland. Underneath the city lay cracks of America's own past about racism, revolution and our love and use of guns.
You have a gal pal to help you through it all. You meet her as though an introduction of a Disney Princess, she gently moves her hair to the side and you fall. See Aladdin, The Little Mermaid and every other princess movie. When you first meet Elizabeth I though a musical number might start. She's your princess, your luck, your voice of moral scrutiny, Jiminy Cricket, your debt. She's the girl who you need to pay off your debt. Get her back! Elizabeth is not a nuisance, in overall plot she does get captured
like any damsel in fiction, but during battle, which can go insane. In
battle she can't be hit, only you can, so no annoying escort missions,
few.
From what you've already done to get to her it seems like it be easier to start a new identity. The amount of murder and what else you have to do just to get to her makes whatever your debt is in the millions.
Once with Elizabeth there is no time without Elizabeth. The loneliness is gone with her. She is your Kagome from Inuyasha. Be it a much more helpful relationship as she constantly finds extra loot for you or gives you what you need in battle, be it health, salt or ammo.
Salt powers you new powers and that couldn't be more American than I can think of. Salty fatty foods giving you powers, that is rich and high in cholesterol. This time your powers are called vigors. You'll be sure to gain a favorite, perhaps the one where you catch bombs and bullets with your bare hands and fling them back at an opponent. The new feature in these is no more buying of the trap setting, they come with trap built in. So just to remind you it's barely the 1920's and you can shoot electric crystals out of your hands to fry enemies to the bones until nothing is left. Super powers with guns in the 1920's in a floating city.
To sum up the science fiction story elements in this game would be an entire other post. I'll just leave it as a great work of sci-fi with nods to so much it would take pages to fully explore every bit that stood out.
There were some lost opportunities here or there. You meet with a group happy about the death of Abraham Lincoln and worshipping John Wilkes Booth. I thought there might be some more encounters with them, but that subplot became more of a killer robot makeover, I won't explain that, but you'll get it if you play the game. Medium gameplay didn't show much of certain enemies that were shown off in trailers. I would have liked some more run-ins with weirder bad guys then just cops and thugs.
Jumping on the railing and having sky battles perfect for a city set in the sky were tiresome. An element not needed to me, but others might find more appealing.
There were minor hiccups here and there. Some enemies wouldn't notice me unless I stepped somewhat close to them even if I was in there eye line. Some graphics failed to look that nice.
If I did have a rating system I'd give it a 9 out of 10, but it's just not Bioshock. Bioshock was a horror game, having a darker theme , set at the bottom of the sea. It's populace corrupted by their misuse of powers . A different soundtrack, style and feel. It fails to be that Bioshock. Then there's the stupid name, Bioshock Infinite. I get the reasoning behind it, (I get the ending) but it still was an idiotic choice for a title. Couldn't it have been Stratoshock or something conveying being in the air?
Rapture will always be the nightmare I enjoy, the skies are too sunny in Columbia.
spoiler
For a very short period you are returned to Rapture of the original Bioshock and reminded me of the setting, differences and just sounds and it made miss that game. Why not really make Bioshock 3?
"Meditation, Creativity, Peace. This fascinating documentary
follows the renowned director David Lynch on a 16-country tour of
Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America to promote the individual and
global impact of meditation. With equal parts wit and passion, the film
reveals Lynch’s commitment to transcendental meditation as way of
changing the world, starting from within."
(2012, 71 min. Digital projection)
A Q&A with David Lynch and Russell Brand will follow the screening.
ALL HAMMER PUBLIC PROGRAMS ARE FREE. Assigned seating is available in
the Billy Wilder Theater. Free tickets are required and available at
the Box Office, one ticket per person on a first come, first served
basis. Members enjoy priority seating and seat selection, subject to
availability. Membership does not guarantee seating. Arrival at least
one half hour prior to program time is recommended.
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