Everlasting Everything Friday

Okay everyone, we have a lot to cover here, so let’s just jump right into it.

BOX OFFICE PREDICTIONS!

1. Up
2. Land of the Lost
3. The Hangover
4. Night at the Museum Too
5. Drag Me To Hell

Needless to say, I am not very confident at all in this week’s predictions, considering the theaters will be saturated with a lot of very dismissible titles. I mean, “Land of the Lost”? “The Hangover”? Not to mention Krasinksi’s indie romance flick “Away We Go”, and Richard Dreyfuss’ mainstream romance flick “My Life in Ruins”, which even after studying its IMDb page, I STILL can’t tell if it’s an actual sequel to “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”. I think that unfortunately it probably isn’t, because the last time I checked “My Big Fat Greek Divorce” was still in pre-production. Ahem. Anyway, I still need to see “The Brothers Bloom”, and “Moon” comes out next week, so I think that even with all this eye-of-the-storm mediocrity I might still get away with spending my money in a worthwhile fashion.

It's like a more adorable "Juno"...

That is, if I can pull myself away from Watanabe’s not-very-new one-season anime “Samurai Champloo”. I’m about half way done with the 25 episode series, and it’s strikingly similar to his earlier work “Cowboy Bebop”, which is about all I can hope for. Anime is something I very, very rarely delve into, and you can rest assured that once I finish the series–although I may subject you all to video game and movie industry news–I will try my hardest not to further isolate this blog by talking anime.

I quickly wanted to mention though that the infamous “cupcake” update for the G1 Android phone has finally been released, and if you’re out of the loop then I’m not surprised. Essentially the G1 is the free market’s answer to an iPhone, and it runs the increasingly popular Android OS based off a Linux kernel. And now if you’ll allow me to go on a bit of a rant while trying my best to emphasize that the phone market as it exists today has more than enough room for a great many smart phone brands to coexist. Really, iPhone, Palm Pre, Blackberry thing, whatever–it’s all fine and can all be good for different people. Anyway, the nice thing, though, about the G1, is that when it was released, it could already do everything an iPhone could do for a lot less money. And it ran on a 3G network right out of the box. First gen iPhone purchasers will already note that they had to wait until Apple released a new version of their phone, which had to be bought separately for it to get this functionality. And now that that’s happened, they have to wait 6 months for yet another iPhone to come out to get the new functionality that G1’s over-the-air update just provided for free. Now, don’t get me wrong; the iPhone is a great product and they are pretty much just copying and pasting Nintendo’s business model for their line of phones. What I’m saying, though, is that for me it makes a lot more sense to spend hundreds of dollars less, not get locked into a 3 year contract, be able to download free applications, record and send video, copy and paste text from any application onto a clipboard, and generally live better. What’s REALLY funny, though, is that I don’t even hate Apple. My friends will be the first to attest that if I had the money, I would’ve traded in my Compaq for an Apple laptop a long time ago. It’s just that as cool as their phone is, I’d rather go the free market route. Viva la revolucion!

Fight the power!

Okay, let’s see. Already talked film, anime, and technology, what else… how about television? Tonight I finally got a chance to check out Conan in his new L.A. digs, and to my relief it is almost exactly what I expected it to be. If you’ve seen it, I’m sure you’ll agree with me in thinking the whole throw to Andy Richter thing is a little weird, but then again I guess it was way back in the day, too. Aside from that it’s pretty much just classic Conan with a new set (and probably a new demographic, but, who keeps track of those things). Much like I’ve always done, I’ll continue to record his shows on my DVR when he happens to have a guest on that I’d want to see (this actually doesn’t happen very often). Also, NBC is trying to force me to be excited about an upcoming fall show they’re throwing out there called “The Community” which is a pretty awful looking sitcom about a guy who has to go back to community college because he was banned from being a lawyer…? I think? It really doesn’t look very good, but it DOES star Joel McHale and John Oliver, and I don’t think it has a laugh track, so… I’ll be forced to give it a chance.

It um, also stars Chevy Chase.

Okay, and now my late-week E3 bullet point coverage that I couldn’t get around to yesterday. I’m sure on Monday I’ll do a final recap, but until then:

• First of all, what the hell, Activision? I know your company has nothing left to lose, but you know how you don’t win back fans? Suing to stop the development of a highly anticipated holiday game starring Jack Black. Yeah, that’s about the last thing you do.
• Nintendo announced that they developed an entirely new handheld system, got it ready for launch, and then threw it away. This DOES NOT surprise me, as I’ve already pointed out that their business model rarely has room for *actual new products*, and they tend to prefer just re-releasing their old products with new cameras built in.
• Final Fantasy XIV, as much as it will be a game that I am not going to buy, IS INDEED apparently going to be composed by Uematsu. That’s a pretty weird thing considering he hasn’t handled a solo FF soundtrack since FFIX, and that he’s only committed one or two songs per game for the last two, and isn’t doing anything with FFXIII. Weird indeed.
• Nintendo couldn’t help but announcing the very obvious news that they’re working on a new Zelda game for the Wii. Considering that their last one was “Twilight Princess” (a game which I believe spawned the “Twilight”‘ vampire-themed novels), and that it was launched simultaneously on the Wii and the GameCube, I guess this new Zelda will be the first true Wii Zelda game. Nothing about this bullet point impresses me in the slightest, other than the hideous revelation that “Zelda” fans and “Twilight” fans are always one in the same.
• I guess most hands-on impressions of the PSP Go are pretty good, but I’m still not convinced that I should go out and buy one. I assume what will happen is that 3 years from now, there’ll be one or two exclusive games for it that I need to buy, and it’ll be a bridge to cross at a much later time in my life. I’ll probably already have many children and we will all be living on a farm somewhere spending our free time reading “Twilight” and playing “Twilight Princess”. This is why I don’t ever look that far ahead into my future. It fucking terrifies me.
• Tony Hawk’s latest game will force gamers to awkwardly stand on a skateboard-shaped controller on their living room carpet and attempt to emulate what it’s like to be a real skater. Yeesh.
• EA Sports announced that they are already working on a game that is like Wii Fit for the 360 and PS3 which will make use of Microsoft’s “Natal” and Ps3’s motion sensing technologies respectively. Hooray.

And that’s about it for now, at least as far as all that goes. I’ll see you guys on Monday with more SECRET NEWS THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW!

Leaked image of the "PS3 Slim"? WHO KNOWS???