Cinemassacre's Monster Madness

If you've been on the Internet, chances are you've heard of James Rolfe, also known as the Angry Video Game Nerd. While I'm not the biggest fan of toilet humour, Rolfe seems to have this ability to make shitting on a bad video game hilarious to me. I can't explain it but something about taking a massive dump on the Nightmare on Elm Street video game always leaves me in stitches.

Every day for the month of October, Rolfe goes through the history of horror films and reviews one movie (On rare occasions will he review two in one day) starting with the oldest films he can find and working his way up to the modern era. Every year has it's own theme and this year he's been going over sequels. If you're a film buff, like movies or movie reviews, check out Cinemassacre's Monster Madness.

Yeah, nothing really funny in this post but I really admire Rolfe's work and think that good work deserves a shameless plug. Not that I'm gonna drive up his hit count or anything...

Simpsons Did It Last Week, Seth!!!

When I was a little kid, my parents were prudes and therefore, sucked at times. I remember being 10 years old and both of them denying me to watch The Simpsons. These days I do my best to prevent children from watching The Simpsons but that's for entirely different reasons which should be obvious to everyone.

However imagine my shock and amazement in 1999 when there was no objection to us watching Family Guy. Maybe my dad was starting to develop a sense of humour, maybe he was attracted by the  main character who may or may not remind others of him, who knows? But we used to watch it together and laugh...until it got cancelled.

What is the most commonly used phrase at the FOX network?

I was excited when it came back. However that excitement quickly faded when I saw that the episodes were...not bad (Not yet, anyway) but underwhelming. They just seemed focused on dragging scenes on and on with boring dialogue, repetitive jokes that didn't go anywhere and musical numbers that made it obvious the writers were putting little effort into what they were doing.

I haven't watched any episodes within the last two years because I got tired of the same jokes over and over and Seth MacFarlane singing. To me, it looked like they were going to keep milking this cow for as long as they could like The Simpsons did and he would do the same with American Dad and The Cleavland Show. It's not like a lot of creative process was going into the making of those shows anyway.

Do I need to go on?

So you can imagine my shock when I read this week that Seth MacFarlane was thinking about ending Family Guy. Now, this might have a lot of fanboys turning white with fear but I don't think you have anything to fear. Look, if he wants it to end, then he would have ended it. Don't be dumb like Larry King and think Seinfeld was cancelled; it went off the air because Jerry Seinfeld felt he had done enough and because he didn't want to do any more episodes.

So what's holding you back, Seth? Surely you read Internet message boards (Probably not) but even you have to know that the quality of the show has dropped big time. Talk to any fan and they'll most likely say that the stuff from the first three season were the best the show ever did.

Look, Seth, I know that people have accused you in the past of copying from The Simpsons but you're doing that right now. For the past two weeks there was all this talk about The Simpsons cast having to take a pay cut and whether it might mean the end of the show or not. Though given how often the show is on so much in syndication, they must be making royalties off of that (Occupy Evergreen Terrace, anyone?) and given how the show is shit these days, the pay cut is well deserved.

And all this talk about you wanting to bring back Star Trek to TV? Look, I already went into great detail about this on the last podcast I did for The Basement Vagrants, it's probably going to be a long time before we see Star Trek on TV and even then there's no guarantee it will succeed. Besides, you're already concerned with bringing The Flintstones back to TV (Cuz the 18-24 male demographic was begging for that) so just leave the 24th century alone.

And there might be some people who say, "Hey, he's a Trek fan and he also guest starred on episodes of Star Trek! Why not him?"

My response:

A) So what if he was a guest star on an episode? William Shatner was the star of the franchise and yet we still got the cosmic turd known as Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. And yeah, I know about the difficulties involved in making that film. I don't give a shit.

B) He was a guest star on an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. And that's all I will say about that

In conclusion, I don't believe Seth when he says stuff like this. If he wanted to end it, he would have ended it or announced that this would be the last season. I personally think he's just making this up in a pathetic attempt to draw ratings. But if you are sincere in your claims, do it sooner than later.

What is the favourite activity of FOX animation writers?

Beware of Beware The Batman

I hate repeating myself but as most of you have gathered from my review of the graphic novel Batman: Year One, I'm a huge fan of the Caped Crusader. Hell, I can remember the first time I watched Batman: The Animated Series when I was a kid. It was an awesome series and set the standard for other superhero cartoons.

They tried to make other Batman cartoons after the DCAU (DC Animated Universe) came to an end when Justice League: Unlimited (A spin-off of Batman: TAS) aired it's finale in 2006. Warner Bros. animation started before that and aired a new series simply called The Batman in 2004. I watched a few episodes of it because I am an immature little man wanted to see what they would do that the first series hadn't done before. Giving the Joker dreadlocks was not one of the great decisions. I mean, if you want to give the Joker a new direction, dreadlocks are not the answer.

This picture pretty much speaks for itself

Some of the latest cartoon superhero shows have been pretty good. I've been watching Young Justice and that's a really cool show. I've always wanted to check out Batman: The Brave and the Bold but something about it just keeps me away. Maybe because I'm older, I want something a little darker and more character driven out of my superheroes and there's nothing like that for Batman. At least not yet. Cartoon Network recently announced that they would be launching a new series in two years with an interesting title, Beware the Batman.

Cool, maybe a different origin story like The Batman was but didn't succeed at. Darker incarnations of The Joker, Riddler, Two-Face with amazing animation and...

...What the Bat-fuck?

Look, I'm all for the evolution of animation but...CG animated Batman is not the way to go. My friend Aaron is a fan of the Green Lantern. I personally have no interest because his weakness is the colour yellow. So yeah, piss on him and he's useless. But when I heard that there was going to be a Green Lantern cartoon series, I thought it would be interesting to check out.

What turned me off from it right away was that it was CG animated. I'm sorry, when everything looks like something you'd see on a TV show for babies, it's not going to attract me as a viewer. The same goes for this.

And plus...is that a guy wearing a pig mask? I'll admit, I'm doing my best to follow DC's New 52 universe with some difficulty but is Batman fighting a man in a pig mask now? Plus I think that's a frog or just a messed up version of Killer Croc beside the pig. And...who's the chick with white hair? Wasn't she in Monsters vs Aliens?

Kinda looks like her...make her eyes darker and that's it

However if there's one thing that absolutely disgusts me about this, it's Alfred. You're probably thinking, "Gee, Schweitzer-Man, got something against the English?" Normally, no, but in this case, Alfred is what's going to ruin the show. You don't even have to be a huge Batman fan to know who Alfred is. The old guy, loyal butler to the Wayne family, always tidying up Wayne Manor, creating an alibi for his boss and tending to any wounds got on the battlefield.

So why in the hell did the creators of the show decide that they would make Alfred be wielding guns to help Batman fight crime. Now, let's look at this logically: Batman, who's own parents were murdered after being shot by a petty criminal, thinks that the best way to fight crime is to have a senior citizen going around and SHOOTING THE BAD GUYS WITH GUNS!? And those look like real guns. Most kids shows today just have the bad guys shooting laser weapons of some kind but those look like bullets coming out of Alfred's gun. That's just what Gotham needs; a near senile butler going around shooting people he thinks are criminals because they don't know where he can find Gold Bond at 2:30 in the morning.

"Do you want me to put a cap in your ass?"

I'd go into his sidekick not being Robin but instead some chick with a sword but I'm not going to. To sum it up, this looks like one big pile of Bat-crap. Let's just hope they don't get Frank Miller to write a few episodes.

It'll Get Better

While I do my best to update the blog as often as I can, I do admit that last month probably wasn't my best in terms of blogging quality. Yeah, the 9/11 post was serious and I do like to do serious work every now and then but I hope that this month I'll still be able to do a lot more.

Lately most of my time has been occupied by sleep. Yeah, not gonna lie, I'm a lazy mofo. Working midnights blows, trying to find new work, new apartment and the time I usually have off is spent in dreamworld. Also I've been comitting a lot of time to doing podcasts with friends from college, as well as doing my own podcast for a boxing website I contribute to (Albeit, not consistantly). Last week I took part in a Star Trek podcast that took nearly three hours to get through. Not that I don't have a good time with them but even looking back at it now, I think, "Three hours...what the hell is the matter with me!?" That'll but up on the Basement Vagrants site some time soon.

Right now I keep hearing rumours about how Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore might be getting a divorce cause Kutcher is cheating. I remember being really annoyed at the couple when they first hooked up because I really didn't give a shit about their relationship and it made me realize that there are so many other celebrity couples that make a big deal about how in love they are and then break up shortly after getting married. I'll be making a list about that soon.

But anyway, thanks for the support. Each month has been better than the last in terms of hits and hopefully it will get better in terms of post quality and updates.