What Rocked My World In 2010: A Short Survey

Now the things on this list may not have all come out in 2010, but they certainly colored my vision of this year.


God Hand: I will eventually shut up about this game, but seriously, it rocked my world. I could just start playing it right now, I enjoyed the experience so much. Of course, given how many times I've brought it up, that probably isn't surprising. It was the game I enjoyed the most this year.

Scott Pilgrim vs The World: I love, love, love this movie. I can't say that enough. And I am glad that as others get to see it, they love it too. And I've read some grumbling from the people who started with the graphic novels from day one getting miffed that the movie is developing a cult following, like somehow those that love the movie are taking away from their love of the books, and it doesn't have to be like that. We can all get along.

Anamanaguchi: The band that did the soundtrack for the Scott Pilgrim vs The World game. Now I am a huge fan of chiptunes, but this band, they got it right... pitch perfect, especially on tunes like Cheap Store and Rock Club. I mean, the music was half the selling point of the game in the trailers for me (sadly, I still haven't gotten to play the game as of yet since I only have the Wii).

Charlie Brooker: Anyone who is adding to the pop culture and news discourse in a funny and relevant way is good people in my book. The fact that Charlie Brooker is so awesome at doing so is just the icing on the cake. His take on My Sweet 16 is legendary. And not only have I watched a lot of his work, I've also found myself fascinated by his writing as well.

Freddie Wong's Youtube Channel: Freddiew's channel was a revelation. It showed me and a lot of other people that doing awesome action effects doesn't have to be a costly affair, and I am sure there is going to be a new generation of independent directors who are taking a lot of cues from their work, especially since every short they release comes with behind the scenes films as well, letting those who are interested in learning gain some insight into the process. That alone is valuable. The fact that the short films they are producing are awesome is almost a bonus at that point. Time Crisis was the clip that got a lot of views this year.

Ugly Americans: I've always been taken with shows which marry the mundane and the absurd, and Ugly Americans takes the idea of New York and adds all kinds of supernatural creatures to the mix... vampires, zombies, birdmen, demons and the like, all trying to live the American dream together. It is exactly my kind of animated series, as it is a little morbid and a whole lot of funny.

Dragonball Z: I hadn't watched any purely anime shows outside of seeing Macross Plus on Teletoon a few years ago, so I had some preconceptions. Mainly I thought that on some level these series were much like the cartoons I watched as a child... you know, big casts of characters and battles between good and evil, but no one would die and things wouldn't really change from the beginning of the series to the end. Oh, how I was wrong. While there was a lot of filler material in Dragonball Z, there is a huge serial narrative that goes along with it. The original Dragonball was full of humor and gentleness... Z was a lot darker and full of consequences and sacrifices. In the end, I laughed, I cried and I ultimately conquered almost 300 episodes of fine Japanese drama and I was introduced to a whole new world of animated entertainment.

Anyway, I am sure if I thought about it some more, there would be more items on this list, but I think it is decent as is. Happy New Year everybody.

Tut Tut Tut, Condé Nast

As a Canadian, I am prepared to pay more for things. I've learned to live with it. But even with that expectation (one which exists despite how strong our dollar is now), you can push me a little too far.

For instance, I was looking at getting a subscription to Wired Magazine, and they priced it at 40 dollars for 12 issues. That seemed fair.

But I got curious, and I decided to see what Americans were getting. I really shouldn't have done that.

3 Year subscription: 36 dollars and you get a free t-shirt
A 1-year subscription is $10 (with a T-shirt too).

Let's just say after seeing that differential, I am not inclined to subscribe. Especially since I know just how much more it costs to send such items to me than it does to Americans. It certainly isn't four times as much. I might have been willing to go twice as much... but bending Canadians over a table like that is a dick move.

So in short, Condé Nast can blow me, because just for that move, I am not buying their magazines at the newsstand anymore either.

Is This The Movie Quote Of The Year?

I think it is.

You are probably going to be a very successful computer person. But you're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole.

The reason I say that is because I have yet to see The Social Network, but I still know that quote. I mean, as much as I love and champion Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, and quote it daily (He punched the highlights out of her hair!), I think the above is indeed the quote of the year.

John Leguizamo Is Doing Another One Man Show

AWESOME!

I love his one man shows... and I hope this one gets picked up for cable too.

All I have to say.*

* yet another slow week, short post.

It's Sad That I Understand This Only In The Most Abstract Way

Having never watched either of the shows in question, I can only vaguely understand the joke. But I know some of you do, so it seemed worth sharing.

Empire Strikes Back Chosen Amongst Others For The National Film Registry

Since the NFR is about preserving films as part of the American cultural legacy, my question is: which version of The Empire Strikes Back are they seeking to preserve... the one we all saw as children, or the re-edited version Lucas came out with instead.

It is an interesting question, is it not?

Taking a Break for Christmas

See you with a video on Boxing Day.

So enjoy a Venture Brothers Christmas!

Year 34: The Pageant of the Supertransmundane AKA Happy Birthday To Me

Last year, I was a little introspective about my birthday, but this year... well, I am feeling a little more playful.

I like being playful. Because while I am sometimes dour in real life, in general I laugh a lot. I mean, a lot... and if you can laugh, well, then you find merriment in a lot of things, and that has value. I sometimes forget that, but if you can laugh, you can get through many problems.

I could say it was the best of times, or it was the worst of times, but you know, it is often both at the same time... a year full of both high expectations and hopes dashed... but I learned for both, and that has value too. Of course, I followed other things aside from the saga of Conan O'Brien...

But the thing I think I most want from this upcoming year is to be more like Terry Crews. Yes, I share a birthday with the awesomeness of Samuel L. Jackson, but I think Mr. Crews transcended that kind of cool this year. So if pictures of me bare-chested at the New York Stock Exchange pop up or of me knocking some buildings down, you'll know why. And if I was Terry Crews cool, I too could become the fictional President of the United States, and that is a dream worth pursuing.

I ended up having a decent year, met some amazing people, ate well... so aside from the minor quibbles everyone has, I really can't complain.

And what more could you want from a year?

Sunday Video: Christmas In Hollis

I was going to put another mashup-type music video here this week, but then I realized that next weekend is Christmas, and I hadn't really put anything down which was celebratory.

So I thought, what is a song that doesn't really get the airplay it deserves from those stations that go solidly Christmas music-oriented after the American Thanksgiving.

And then it hit me... you never hear the classic Run DMC Christmas track Christmas In Hollis anymore.

So I am going to remedy that with this post.

Week 32: Pageant of the Transmundane

Due to Christmas Day falling on my usual Transmundanity Award day, next week that post will be delayed one week.

Anyway, this week's winning entry comes to us from Semaj's Blog Your Blog.

In this case, it is an entry about a phenomenon I hadn't heard of before, one which made sense and yet blew my mind at the same time. I'm talking about the strangeness of hover hands.

And since this week's winning entry has to do with hovering and I am delaying next week's award for Christmas, I thought Homer tossing Jesus up in the air in heaven would be the best image to display for this wondrous win.

Congrats Semaj. Here is your badge.

The rules of this little contest: Every week I will be selecting one blog post that I have seen from the vast reaches of the blogging village to bestow with the Homer Simpson Transmundanity Award for being one of the freakiest(in a funny way) things I've seen or read during a 7 day period. It doesn't necessarily have to have been written during the week, I just had to have encountered it. That means that if you find something interesting and repost it like a movie or whatever, if I saw it at your blog first, you get the prize. Of course, creating your own content is also a very good way to win.

This is not a meme. This is an award that I give out, and thus, I am not "tagging" you.

Now, if you see a post that you think is worthy of this illustrious prize, just drop me a line at campybeaver@gmail.com and we'll see if we can't get your suggestion up and award-ready while giving you some credit and a link to your own blog.

Jon Stewart Did Something Wonderful Last Night

Jon Stewart of The Daily Show has been hammering a particular issue this week, one which needed to be talked about.

There is a bill before the U.S. Senate that would give financial and medical aid to the first responders of 9/11. The Republicans filibustered every bill that didn't have to do with extending tax cuts to every American, so that measure, which was named after a heroic police officer, James Zadroga, who died from the health complications from being down at Ground Zero for months.

And the fact that the media was ignoring this made Stewart angry, very angry, and for his final show of 2010, he decided to do something about it.

He was so incensed by this injustice that he decided to devote his whole show to the issue, discussing the matter with 9/11 first responders and letting them talk about their health and other problems they are facing without that legislation.

The reason that I liked this, aside from getting those stories out to people who watch the show, is now a few more media outlets are discussing this issue. Granted it is focusing on Jon Stewart talking about the story, but more coverage about the issue, no matter how it is being framed, is a good thing.

A Commercial That Gets Me Going Every Time

I've been meaning to write this little rant for a while now, but I'd always forget about it the next morning.

You see, there is a particular Head and Shoulders Ad that clearly exists in the magical world of adland.

Watch it if you haven't seen it before. I'll wait.

Now in what world is that at all cute? Honestly, when would anyone get away with that?

Do you know what would happen if I was that guy in the real world? I'd at least get a dirty look, I'd probably get smacked in the face and perhaps the police would be called and just maybe the whole thing would end up on the news after someone in the salon recorded the aftermath or it was caught on the security camera. And I am not implying that it is a matter of how I look either. I think that would happen no matter what the person looked like.

And I think that is how I would have loved that commercial to have played out... the pervy water guy getting smacked for his harassment, because that wasn't flirtatious... that was just creepy.

Midweek Video: Rigby Stew

My definition of a good mashup is one which you are intimately familiar with the two or more parts that make it up, and yet when you hear them put together, they sound like the whole thing was recorded like that in the first place.

This blend of Green Day's Brain Stew and The Beatles' Eleanor Rigby fits that bill.

Maybe there will be some more mashup goodness this weekend.

SyFy Original Movies for Theatrical Release?

Oh Hell No.

If you've ever seen a movie that the SyFy Network has put together that wasn't a pilot for a series, you know that the work of Ed Wood comes off particularly well when compared with these efforts.

I mean, they are just awful affairs amateurishly written, badly developed and often simply paycheck projects for the actors involved.

How anyone at Universal thought that taking that same level of quality and putting it on the big screen boggles my mind. Yes, I am sure there will be a little more money there, but really, how much can you polish a turd, because that's what this amounts to.

Because the world needed to see a sequel to Sharktopus on the big screen, didn't it?

Sometimes You Do Need The Instructions

Now I am going to admit that this post is going to be not for everyone. But there are a few readers out there that I know will understand exactly where I am coming from on this.

With the ever-increasing number of games that are legally available and distributed online, this particular issue may come up more and more.

Now I understand when I am buying a game online, I am not getting a printed manual. To have that item instantly, I am willing to make that sacrifice. And most of the time it doesn't matter because a lot of games these days don't need a manual anyway because they teach you as you go along or they have a tutorial. And in the case of more complicated fare, they have a PDF version which if you were so inclined, you could print.

And I really enjoy complicated games, the kind that you have to learn after a lot of practice, testing things out and reading.

So I was a little disappointed when I bought myself an early birthday present, a digital copy of Football Manager 2011, and it did not include a PDF manual or have a tutorial.

You see, the manual was online. For a full-frame game, that seems... I don't know, rather unwieldy. Yes, there are some tool-tips and a mini-glossary, but this is a game that requires competence from the moment you start it, so having a little more guidance would have been helpful. And because every little chapter is a separate page, it takes a long time to put all those little bits together into a document one can print. I mean, with this kind of game, it should come with either the instructions or a tutorial... preferably both because this game is truly one which can bury you in information.

It is just an experience which made what should have been an excellent first day with what looks like a quality game less than stellar, and first impressions are sometimes the lasting ones, and to make such an impression for a couple of megabytes savings during the download seems foolish to me. I mean, it certainly doesn't make me want to buy another game from Sports Interactive in a download-only fashion again.

Reese Witherspoon on her absence from movies

The movies that are being made feel different. There are a lot of really, really, really big movies about robots and things — and there's not a part for a 34-year-old woman in a robot movie. I've never done the giant robot movie. Never done the superhero movie. That doesn't interest me too much.

I guess Gwyneth Paltrow being in Iron Man and its sequel didn't happen then. But honestly, I think this whole comment boils down to the last two lines.

Reese Witherspoon didn't want to do a blockbuster action-type movie... and that is her prerogative. She is free to pursue the parts she wants. But if the kind of parts she wants to play don't exist, and she is such a powerful individual in Hollywood, I am sure she could have found or even developed a script that she would want to make.

The fact that her current movie (and let's be honest, Four Christmases) seem like scripts Katherine Heigl would attach herself to should be an indication that she still isn't picking the best scripts.

Her next film seems to be an action movie directed by McG which she is producing. Do I really need to say more?

Sunday Video: Black Sheep

I love Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. I've made no secret of that. So for a slow, snowy Sunday, I thought I would share Brie Larson's full rendition of Black Sheep from the film.

I love her look of breathless excitement at 2:24. I wish they would have kept that for the finished film.

Week 31: Pageant of the Transmundane

This week, CNN prefaced a story about a guy who had a horrific case of ulcerative colitis with a particular movie clip: the bathroom diarrhea clip from Dumb and Dumber. Someone in the clearance department there has a sick sense of humor.

Anyway, this week's winning entry comes to us from The House Cat.

Now I am sure a lot of you are familiar with some of the smartass reviews that people write on Amazon, especially about products with a rather specialized and limited clientele.

One item that lends itself to this style of humorous narrative is audio cables. Especially the nearly 7 thousand dollar variety.

Oh god, the voices.

And since this week's winning entry has to do with a possible end of the world, I thought Homer warning people of that same thing would be the most appropriate expression of this idea.

Congrats J. Here is your badge.

The rules of this little contest: Every week I will be selecting one blog post that I have seen from the vast reaches of the blogging village to bestow with the Homer Simpson Transmundanity Award for being one of the freakiest(in a funny way) things I've seen or read during a 7 day period. It doesn't necessarily have to have been written during the week, I just had to have encountered it. That means that if you find something interesting and repost it like a movie or whatever, if I saw it at your blog first, you get the prize. Of course, creating your own content is also a very good way to win.

This is not a meme. This is an award that I give out, and thus, I am not "tagging" you.

Now, if you see a post that you think is worthy of this illustrious prize, just drop me a line at campybeaver@gmail.com and we'll see if we can't get your suggestion up and award-ready while giving you some credit and a link to your own blog.

Noticing Things in Movies Without the Dialogue?

Does anyone else out there tend to notice a lot more little tidbits in a movie while you are watching it on DVD with the commentary track on? I know some of you don't like to watch movies with commentary tracks, but bear with me.

I don't mean the things that the participants are commenting on... I am talking more about the body language and more subtle facial expressions of the actors involved in the scenes. Technically you can get this effect from just turning the sound down, but because I watch so many movies with commentary, that is generally how I notice these things.

In thinking about this, it made me wonder if that very same idea ended up shaping my perception of foreign language films, because I often don't know what the natural cadence those languages have, so I rely more on the visual cues. The fact that most of these movies would also stay on a shot for longer than 5 seconds was merely a bonus.

So, has anyone else has this kind of experience with a movie?

Too Hot for The COA: My First Album

You know how sometimes a producer ends up with a show, song or whatever that is too hot for its original venue, so it gets released separately? This is one of those kinds of posts.

The current topic at The Coalition of Awesomeness is "The first album you either owned or loved", and my first album had a particular single with rather suggestive lyrics. Because at the Coalition, we like to keep things relatively family-friendly, the fact that I would end up getting into detail about the song in question would have been really awkward, as I would have had to be really euphemistic, and it wouldn't have been as much fun for me.

But then I thought to myself and remembered that I too had a blog with which to discuss this matter uncensored. I can let it all hang out here.

Anyway, when you were 8 or 9, you might not have gotten what a song you enjoyed was really about, or the subtle undertones present in the lyrics that immediately jump out at you as an adult.

Since we are all adults here, see if there is something in the lyrics for Point of No Return by Expose that really strikes you as perhaps salacious.

The common road,
seems just like a dream
It's a mystery to me
Fills me within when we're together
Oh baby can't you see
I like to feel the passion
To the point of no return
I will be in full reaction
I want to take you in my arms
You're taking me to the point of no return
You're taking me to the point of no return
It took so long, and I treasure now
The love you gave to me
And when you smile
It warms my heart and me
Oh baby can't you see
I like to feel the passion to
the point of no return
Oh baby, I will be in full reaction
I want to take you in my arms
You're taking me to the point of no return
You're taking me to the point of no return
I wanna be with you baby
I wanna be by your side
I wanna be with you baby
I'm gonna love you every night
You're taking me to the point of no return
You're taking me to the point of no return
You're taking me to the point of no return
You're taking me to the point of no return
You're taking me to the point of no return

I may just have a dirty mind, so could just be seeing references to the female orgasm somewhere that it really isn't. It has happened before. But I don't think I'm wrong here or really stretching to see that.

The weird thing is, the thought randomly occurred to me one night when I was remembering the song back in my early 20's, because I started singing the chorus to myself with the accompanying grunts. That was my Oh moment (but I didn't make an O face). And then I listened to it recently for the aforementioned Coalition of Awesomeness topic, and it was so obvious now.

I mean, as an adult, I get what She-Bop by Cyndi Lauper is about now too... and the video makes it plain (but stylishly rendered... it was the 1980's after all) that it is about the feminine excesses of masturbatory bliss.

And by the time I got around to I Touch Myself by The Divinyls and Icicle by Tori Amos, well, I was older and/or things were just less subtle. (Is it sad that every time I think about Icicle, I always preface it with the line "This one time at Bible Camp..."?) And I guess the less I say about the back catalog of Salt N Pepa, the better. But there is a certain joy (and let's be honest, heartbreak) in discovering the dirty undertones of a song that you liked as a child.

The strange thing is, I can basically pick out two major elements from this single song which ended up being things which characterized the majority of music I would like as an adult.

Female singers: Yes, I love female singers. Almost as far back as I can remember, I've enjoyed listening to women sing more then men, and it is a trend which I believe started with Point of No Return. My Last.fm charts, as rudimentary as there are at this point, do reveal that fact. From Expose through The Bangles and into the 1990's with Juliana Hatfield, Bjork, the aforementioned Tori Amos and PJ Harvey and into the past decade with Sleater Kinney, Edith Frost, The Cardigans and so many others over the past 25 years.

Keyboards/Electronic Elements: Granted the way I drifted was into music that had some of those same elements, but used in different ways. Of course I like a wide variety of electronic music now, but it goes deeper than that. I generally like almost anything with strong keyboards. Stereolab, Broadcast, Saint Etienne, Krautrock in general, old Doors records, Wendy Carlos, progressive rock (gasp!), chiptunes, Bach, lounge and so many others. I love farfisas and moogs and mellotrons (oh my!).

In fact, a lot of the music I like these days fits into both those categories at once. I think the reason I liked Make it Through by Bis the first time I heard it was because it sounded almost like a riff on Point of No Return, which I realized as I was writing this.

Strangely enough, songs featuring orgasms doesn't end up high on that list. I guess if they did, I'd like the music of Prince a lot more. But I think that is a story for another day.

Now if you too see what I see in Point of No Return, allow me to scar you for life by showing you a preteen boy singing that same song on Kids Incorporated.

If You Didn't Dislike George Lucas Before...

...this story might do it for you.

George Lucas is apparently buying the rights for a lot of classic movies so he can digitally recreate long dead actors in some future project.

It is a rumor, and every time I run across this story, they emphasize the element that Lucas wants to make new movies with those actors. I have an equally plausible, but more horrifying vision of what these little tidbits might actually mean.

What if instead of making new films, Lucas, with the full rights to these movies in his pocket, decides to try to, *ahem*, improve them the way he did the original Star Wars movies, so that the only versions of those older movies that exist are the ones that he worked on.

You know that if he is indeed gathering the rights to these movies that the above scenario has to have at least crossed his mind.

So if you love classic films and the actors who starred in them, the idea that George Lucas will have almost exclusive domain over a respectable amount of either should fill your heart with terror.

Two Villains for the Spiderman Reboot?

So tell me, whose bright idea was it to make a superhero reboot movie with two villains?

I mean, wasn't that the very thing they were trying to fix with this reboot thing in the first place? Haven't they learned their lesson from Spiderman 3 and so many other multiple villain movies?

Just keep it simple. That's what works.

Sad Movie-Related News

Darren Aronofsky still wants to make that Robocop remake.

Sunday Video: Dara O'Briain on Video Games

Irish comedian Dara O'Briain riffs about Guitar Hero, The Wii, Shooters and Metal Gear Solid. Hilarity ensues.

Week 30: Pageant of the Transmundane

A British brewery has taken two iconic items, Stilton cheese and ale, and blended them together in a bottle. I don't know if it is supposed to be used as a condition in a bar bet or if the brewery in question was trying to get ahead of Jones Soda in terms of weird carbonated beverages, but I think I will surely pass on the Blue Brew, because I am sure it tastes so much worse coming back up.

On that lovely note, this week's winning entry comes to us from the literary blog HTMLGIANT.

In this case, it is an elegy to the expired domain girl. We've all seen her, we've just never had a cogent backstory to go with her. And now we do.

And since this week's winning entry has to do with expired domains and the anonymous figures they put on them to denote they are no longer the site you once knew but are on the market, I thought Homer as Mr. X would best indicator of that.

Congrats Jimmy, here is your badge.

The rules of this little contest: Every week I will be selecting one blog post that I have seen from the vast reaches of the blogging village to bestow with the Homer Simpson Transmundanity Award for being one of the freakiest(in a funny way) things I've seen or read during a 7 day period. It doesn't necessarily have to have been written during the week, I just had to have encountered it. That means that if you find something interesting and repost it like a movie or whatever, if I saw it at your blog first, you get the prize. Of course, creating your own content is also a very good way to win.

This is not a meme. This is an award that I give out, and thus, I am not "tagging" you.

Now, if you see a post that you think is worthy of this illustrious prize, just drop me a line at campybeaver@gmail.com and we'll see if we can't get your suggestion up and award-ready while giving you some credit and a link to your own blog.

I Bask in Reflected Glory

I have never been one for the spotlight. In fact, I am terrible at being the center of attention. However, I do rather well for myself when it comes to basking in reflected glory. I mean, even three years later being mentioned by name by then USA Today Tech_Space blogger (and all around awesome person) Angela Gunn for being the kind of blogger she likes to read. That same blurb then ended up being mentioned in a negative way on Michelle Malkin's blog, and I got a lot of hate shown in my direction too, and that still pleases me, because the hate of people you hate is delicious.

Anyway, someone I follow on Twitter named Tim Rogers put a call out for questions for his column at Kotaku the other day, and I thought it would be interesting since I loved his review of God Hand over at his site.

So I sent him a question and somehow it got picked up.

When the grouping you are in is prefaced by a question from Bryan Lee O'Malley of Scott Pilgrim fame, well, that is some nice company to be in. Granted my question/answer was way down the page, but I am not complaining because I am still part of the same article.

The fact that there are at least three 4 star reviews of God Hand on the site (and it comes up quite a few times in Rogers' Kotaku posts) made the second part of my question a little cheeky, because it was something I already knew (and it did come up in other answers as well).

But it was fun participating.

I almost wrote Lee an email telling him his Lucha Bear design had also covertly made it on Kotaku in the same article as Bryan Lee O'Malley, but I thought it would be easier to mention it here.

I'd also like to congratulate a recent Pageant of the Transmundane winner for reaching the IMDB front page. Congrats to John from The Droid You're Looking For for this honor (which I am getting some traffic from because of the Transmundanity badge... again, reflected glory).

(I also just found out my secret New Year's resolution has come true... when I put my name into Google, which I had to do to find the Michelle Malkin post, it now autocompletes. Woohoo! Hooray for small victories).

I Wonder Where This Reporter Is Getting Their Facts

You know when you are reading a news story and the reporter says something so ignorant that you have to wonder if they intentionally got it wrong as a slight against the thing they are writing about.

The thing that brought this question to mind for me is the opening of an article on the Studio Briefing site about the perception that the Tron sequel is going to tank at the box office later this month.

Converting a popular videogame into a movie has always been a dicey proposition. Now, reports indicate that the 3D sequel to Disney’s Tron, a movie about videogames that was released in 1982 — before such things ever arrived in the home — may find itself inheriting the failed legacy of the original.

Seriously, what the hell. We all know that is wrong.

I am not going to talk about all the individual game consoles that came out in the 1970's, you know those one game wonders and some of the also-rans.

No, I'm talking about the Atari 2600 which was out for five years before Tron was released. So I think quite a few people were familiar with having a home console. After all, they sold 30 million of those things, which is more consoles than, let's see, the original Xbox, the Gamecube, Sega's Master System, Dreamcast and Saturn. It is also only 5 million less than the Genesis and about 10 million less than the Playstation 3.

And if you asked even an 18-year old kid what the worst game ever made was, they'd be more than likely to say it was E.T. the Extra Terrestrial which came out in, wait for it... 1982. It was also one of the factors which led to the North American Video Game Crash of 1983. You can't really have an industry crash if there wasn't an industry to begin with, now can you?

OK, geek spasm over. My point is, if the reporter got that detail wrong, how can I trust them when it comes to their analysis of the movie in question? If you were reading an article about a political, sports or historical movie and they made an error like that about the context it is exploring, you would doubt the analysis of that too, wouldn't you? It makes me question their credibility, because it isn't a small mistake.