Final DC Collectibles Comic-Con Exclusive Revealed

By Luke Y. Thompson in Toys
Tuesday, June 18, 2013 at 1:00 pm

Hint: it's something Axel Braun claimed his Superman movie has but Zack Snyder's doesn't. I genuinely wonder if that was the thinking behind it.

Viral Video Du Jour: Flying Bike

By Luke Y. Thompson in Tech
Tuesday, June 18, 2013 at 11:30 am

Sorry it doesn't resemble these, but at least you don't suck like these Starbuck and Apollo knockoffs either, so you deserve better.

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It actually looks too wide for a road, with its VTOL propellers. But on your own property it could be fun indeed, and unless you can capture a botanically minded extra-terrestrial using Reese's Pieces, there aren't any simpler ways to reliably levitate your two-wheeled conveyance.

via One Cool Thing a Day

Disney's Frozen Teaser Takes the Ice Age Strategy

By Luke Y. Thompson in Cartoons, Movies
Tuesday, June 18, 2013 at 10:00 am

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Remember how great that first Ice Age trailer was? No, I don't mean just for the Vanilla Ice song, although much bowing is due for that, indeed (yes it is, and you know it). Skrat and the acorn was some classic cartoon zaniness...but mostly unrelated to the tale of a mammoth, a sabretooth and a sloth finding a human baby and carrying it home.

Disney's Frozen - as opposed to Adam Green's Frozen, in which people trapped on a ski-lift wait forever to exercise their only viable options - is a retelling of The Snow Queen, but you'd never know it from the teaser, which features some funny business between a reindeer and a snowman, whom I assume will be comic-relief characters.

The final film may end up a typical fairy tale...but the teaser ain't that. Check it out after the jump, and tell me that snow dude was not made in the image of the Mad Hatter.

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Tags: disney, frozen

Blu in Your Face: June 18th, 2013

By Luke Y. Thompson in DVDs
Tuesday, June 18, 2013 at 8:00 am

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Lifeforce - Best known as the Tobe Hooper movie with naked space vampires and Patrick Stewart, and it's been so long since I've seen it that that's about all I remember. I also remember that if I had a dollar for every time I had the following conversation...

Me: "I want to rent Lifeforce."
Dad: 'What's Lifeforce?"
Me: (sigh) "The one with the space..."
Dad: "Oh, oh, the space vampires?"
Me: "Yes."
Dad: 'Why didn't you say so?"

...I could have bought a lot more toys that summer. Anyhow, this fully loaded disc features a restored transfer, new commentaries by Hooper and makeup effects designer Nick Maley, and featurettes including an interview with nude alien bloodsucker Mathilda May.

The Howling - A New Agey retreat turns out to be full of werewolves in this satirical Joe Dante flick which spawned a franchise nobody cares about because he didn't really stick with it. Includes a 1995 commentary with Joe Dante and several cast members, and a new one with original novel author Gary Brandner. Definitely worth a look, though you can take or leave the sequels.

American Mary - Touted as part of a new wave of original and ground-breaking horror movies, this overly hyped ode to body modification - that I really wanted to like - is likely to offend grandparents but make the actual body-mod crowd yawn. A gifted medical student learns how to make money on the side by performing amputations and radical plastic surgeries; when it turns out that all her professors are evil rapists, she uses her newfound skills in more illicit ways. Boringly shot and sadly predictable, it's nowhere near as transgressive as it imagines - directors Jen and Sylvia Soska, who call themselves the Twisted Twins and had an actual fight in Mortal Kombat costumes at Fantastic Fest, need to worry more about their craft and less about their image, because there's the germ of a good idea here.

Things to Come - Wonderful 1936 sci-fi classic written by H.G. Wells that basically predicted World War II, but imagined that it would last around a century, after which we would enter a golden age of technology that would emanate from Iraq, of all places. His prognostication skills may have been a little off, but for its day this classic blockbuster was the equivalent of a modern Roland Emmerich flick but with a better screenplay.

Safety Last - You know every movie ever that has characters hanging from an elevated clock tower? This is the Harold Lloyd silent comedy they're all stealing from. Better yet, he was essentially doing all the stunts for real.

Jack the Giant Slayer - Sadly, not a good movie. Easily Bryan Singer's worst, but he may have taken it on just to do a test run for Sentinels.

Those are my picks in this week's Blu-ray crop. What are yours?

Ten Ways to Make a Dungeons & Dragons Movie Not Suck

By Christian Lindke in Daily Lists, Movies, Toys
Tuesday, June 18, 2013 at 6:00 am

On May 7th of this year, Warner Bros. announced that they had acquired the rights to make a new Dungeons & Dragons film. Initially, there were minor cheers throughout D&D fandom. Warner's claim hinted that they were going to make a feature film, and this was a significant step up from the past two made-for-TV films that had been broadcast on SyFy. It wasn't until people read deeper into the Deadline.com article that the collective groan of D&D fans could be heard across the multiverse.

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Wikipedia

The article was filled with conceptual landmines that set off the "it's going to suck" sensors of RPGers everywhere. Phrases like "the film will be produced by... producer Roy Lee and Courtney Solomon...[who] directed a 2000 Dungeons & Dragons feature," and "The studio...will use a script by Wrath Of The Titans and Red Riding Hood scribe...David Leslie Johnson. That script, Chainmail, was acquired last year as a free-standing project, based on an obscure game that was also hatched by D&D designer Gary Gygax before he and Dave Arneson launched D&D" were of particular concern. In the minds of many fans, any connection with Courtney Solomon automatically induces one to write the project off as a potential nightmare. Add to that the fact that the PR staff at Warner didn't know enough about the property to know that Chainmail is more than "an obscure game also hatched by" Gygax, it was the original combat system for D&D. The current combat system was referred to as the "optional system" in the original white box set.

Given that Chainmail also happens to be the name of a trademarked miniature skirmish game published by Wizards of the Coast (read: HASBRO) that had rules designed by Chris Pramas which had been released in the early 2000s, and that the past two D&D films were direct-to-TV affairs, it is not surprising that Hasbro almost immediately filed a legal complaint asking for an injunction preventing any development of a D&D film by Warner Brothers or by Sweet Pea Entertainment (Courtney Solomon's company).

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Copyright Wizards of the Coast 2000

Hasbro claims that Solomon's license with Hasbro for the D&D film and TV rights expired when Sweet Pea Entertainment paid Hasbro $20,000 in fees for the broadcast of Dungeons & Dragons: The Book of Vile Darkness. It is quite certain that Solomon will file a counterclaim asserting his rights, and a mass melee will ensue in which all parties will attempt to use Vorpal Blades or maybe even Blackrazor to settle the issue. You can read the initial lawsuit at The Hollywood Reporter.


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LAFF Review: Europa Report

By Luke Y. Thompson in Movies
Monday, June 17, 2013 at 5:30 pm

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3...2...1...Letdown!

Sorry, Europa Report, but you were trying so hard to make the science believable (and a geek friend of mine insists it still isn't, though it should be sufficient for most audience members), that you forgot to make the fiction any good. The ambitions behind this movie - to make a realistic sci-fi film - are noble, but the execution is terrible from a story perspective.


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McFarlane Upsizes Walking Dead to 10 Inches - Daryl's First!

By Luke Y. Thompson in TV, Toys
Monday, June 17, 2013 at 4:00 pm

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BigBadToyStore

In keeping with McFarlane's odd announcement strategy as of late, a press release with no pictures is issued, and then BigBadToyStore posts the vendor images anyway. Good going, Todd.

The good news is that it's a new sculpt, not like the awfully deformed mini-Daryl that already came out. The bad news is that Todd once again wants a contrarian scale for his figures that doesn't play well with anything else, so rather than go for the standard 8" or 12", he went for ten. Though it's possible 8" and 12" are licensed elsewhere.

This is being touted as the first in a new series; I'd have to imagine either Rick of Michonne would be next. Though an upscaled version of the Bicycle Girl Zombie would be cool.

Daryl can be preordered for the divine price of just under $33.

The Next Star Wars Black 6" Figure Will Be...

By Luke Y. Thompson in Movies, Toys
Monday, June 17, 2013 at 2:30 pm

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Greedo!

Entertainment Earth is gradually revealing images of all the reference materials used by Hasbro sculptures (including some I've never seen before), one day at a time. Because unlike the Special Edition Greedo, you don't want to jump the gun on this.


Wicked Paradise: A VR Game That Puts You in a Strip Club

By Luke Y. Thompson in Video Games
Monday, June 17, 2013 at 1:00 pm

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It is axiomatic that whenever a new technology is invented, one of the first adapters will be the porn industry. Sure, they got it wrong when they picked HD-DVD over Blu-ray, but generally speaking, if you can watch anything on it, somebody is quickly figuring out how to put sex on it.

It didn't take long for the Oculus Rift. The VR/motion capture headset that immerses you in the game may soon give a whole new meaning to "head" set with Wicked Paradise, a game described as the "world's first erotic virtual reality experience."

Actually, depending how you define virtual reality, it wouldn't remotely be the first. There have been porn DVDs that simulate sex POVs and have interactive controls, not to mention Japanese video games with penis-powered controllers and interactive sex with anime girls in pirate hats. It does feature mo-cap stripper models, though.

My big question is this - how bad will the hacks for this game be? You know it's only a matter of time before somebody tries to get into the programming and turn the strippers into Equestria Girls, or Misa Hayase, or Smurfette.

NSFW test footage after the jump (no sex in it, just digital nudity).

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Watermelon Oreos Are a Thing That Is Real and Not Japanese

By Luke Y. Thompson in Food & Drink
Monday, June 17, 2013 at 11:30 am

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TheFoodJunk

Artificial watermelon flavor is arguably the third-greatest thing America has ever created, after the Bill of Rights and bacon condoms. Injecting it into an Oreo is the cookified equivalent of Steve Rogers getting the super-soldier serum.

All we need now is for Taco Bell to find a way to turn this into a meat-and-cheese delivery device, and the universe will collapse upon itself in a flavor explosion of artifice.

Source: Dinosaur Dracula via Fark.