Shamelessly checking Jenna Fischer‘s Myspace blog, I noticed this tidbit among the din of losing the Golden Globe…

This week we are shooting with hot shot director Joss Whedon! This has been especially exciting for me because I already knew Joss. (He has known my husband for a long time.) Joss has quickly become one of our favorite directors. The crew loves him. He’s a huge fan of the show and therefore gets really into every detail of the show. He watches us even when we are in the background of a scene and compliments our smallest of choices. It’s been a total dream. I’m currently the background of a scene and I can see him hunched over the monitors watching a scene and giggling like a little girl. I’m going to miss him.

Geek Icon Joss Whedon takes on the Office? How terrible cool for him! Joss, as you may or may not know, got his start writing TV on Roseanne.

Of course, there’s always talk of special directors working on TV shows and you’d be really pressed to tell the difference. I remember at the height of Quentin Tarantino’s pop stardom between Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown he directed an “ER” that was so amazingly exactly like every other ER that you’d never know or care someone more famous than normal was directing. That’s TV for you. If he does a good job, it shouldn’t be different from the rest of the show.

RobotBling has produced a tribute to Gunpei Yokoi, probably the biggest influence on Nintendo as a company, predating even Miyamoto’s genius creations.

This entry largely deals with Game & Watch LCD games, though it also has some interesting tid-bits on Yokoi himself, and Nintendo’s early history. A second installment is promised, and I eagerly look forward to it.

Rush Hour 3. Chris Tucker’s last movie was Rush Hour 2. The one before that? Rush Hour. How is it he has only made 3 movies in a decade? Jackie Chan has made 16.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters may or may not be good. The trailer made me laugh. It opens March 23rd.

King Of California is at Sundance and doesn’t yet have distribution, but will likely see a wide release this summer. Michael Douglas stars as a mental patient who takes his daughter on a hunt for Spanish gold.

1408 is based on a Stephen King short story with John Cusack and Samuel L Jackson. I think the names are an endorsement enough of this one, but the trailer looks pretty good too.

The next gen is fully underway now and the one thing all 3 major players have in common is that they want you do download games. With content being added on a weekly basis, there’s a lot to cover…

Playstation Network
We’re still waiting for Tekken 5 to hit the US, even if it’s already available in Hong Kong and plenty of folks have set up dummy accounts to get it. fl0w is due in february, and looks like it may be the breakout hit Sony’s been waiting for. In the meantime you can always play Gran Turismo HD, though Major Nelson thinks it looks suspiciously like PGR3. The PS Network has a huge potential with the ability to download games to play on a PSP, but the very low numbers of available games keep even ecstatic supporters from being able to invest too heavily.
Full List of PS3 Network games

Wii Virtual Console
With just over 2 months in the market, they’ve got the strongest lineup, if not the most original. Last week saw the release of Legend Of Zelda III: A Link To The Past, and this coming monday we’ve got Mario Kart 64 and the Sega Genesis classic Comix Zone. Hopefully you didn’t blow your Wii Points on Urban Champion. Not suprisingly, Japan is getting quite a few more games than we are for now. This will hopefully even out as the year goes on.
List of Virtual Console titles

Xbox Live Arcade
While not in the game market as long as the competition, Microsoft has a huge lead on classic and original titles available for download. Must buys include Geometry Wars and Marble Blast Ultra, with enhanced arcade titles like Contra, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, and Street Fighter II. The classic titles aren’t nearly as varied as those found on Wii’s Virtual Console, but online leaderboards and multiplayer keep you from getting bored. The ability to demo any game is also helpful since Microsoft’s point system is designed specifically to trick you into thinking you are spending less money than you are. This past week saw the release of Heavy Weapon, which I played for 40 minutes on the demo before having to take a break. It appears the only benefit to buying the game is to get the achievement points and only play. Forthcoming games include Alien Hominid, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and a game based on MEGAFORCE. I’m not kidding. Megaforce.
List Of Xbox Live Arcade titles

Actually its several weeks of Halo, but who’s counting?

Edge Magazine takes a look Inside Bungie which yeilds this shocking quote:

“We miscalculated, we screwed up, we came down to the wire and we just lost all of that. So Halo 2 is far less than it could and should be in many ways because of that. It kills me to think of it. Even the multiplayer experience for Halo 2 is a pale shadow of what it could and should have been if we had gotten the timing of our schedule right. It’s astounding to me. I f*cking cannot play Halo 2 multiplayer. I cannot do it. And that’s why I know Halo 3 is going to be so much better.”

That sounds like a typical post you might find at Neo GAF or from some blogger, but thats technical lead Chris Butcher. Me personally, I like Halo 2, but if they’ve got a higher goal they can reach with 3, I’m ready for it.

Bungie.net, between weekly updates that reveal nothing more than that they ARE still testing the game, has released fact sheets on the new and improved MA5C Assault Rifle, and the just plain new Mongoose.

The calls have started to come in to those registered for the Halo 3 Beta. Folk who dropped their info at Halo 3.com are getting emails with their invitation information. We all heard about the Crackdown method as well. Players who punch in three hours of Halo 2 multiplayer between Feb 1st and 3rd can also register for an invitation.

But if all else fails, JOIN THE ARMY! While taking a much needed break from dodging roadside bombs in Iraq, soldiers got to cool off by dodging roadside bombs in the new Halo 3 maps.

1up.com‘s Luke Smith and Kathleen Sanders spoke at length with Sony’s David Jaffe on his new game Calling All Cars in this week’s 1up Show. After all the talk of the downloadable PS3 game, the focus shifted toward what Sony is doing wrong, what Nintendo is doing wrong, and what Microsoft is doing wrong. 1up is making a reputation for throwing out tough questions, but I think Jaffe deserves some credit for answering them and being so candid. Few within the industry openly praise the competition or slam their own employer like he does, but the root of it seems to be he is a regular gamer like us, he just happens to have access to the process. The 20 minute interview is posted above.

I innocentedly rented Burnout 3 a couple years ago. I think I read on Penny Arcade that it was fun.

Something inside me changed that day. I became a firm believer in not only crashing cars but also that Xbox Live is awesome. Burnout Revenge was even better, and even though I hated the DS entry, I still looked forward to a next Burnout. The pilot episode of Powet.TV was me gushing for over 20 minutes about Revenge. Don’t look for it, I wisely never posted it. I’m a Burnout fan and when I meet people who are not Burnout fans I can only assume its because they’ve not played the game and therefore are unaware of the awesome they are missing. Or, it’s because they are stupid.

1up has a preview of Burnout 5 on PS3 and Xbox 360. The game promises to use the Revenge feature from the last game and implement it into the multiplayer in a much bigger way and also into the single player. Oh yeah, Burnout is going for an open world this time. I don’t know if I like that, but as long as the races are nuts and the crash courses are deep and I can still use non-racer traffic like ballistics, I’ll be happy. Oh, they’re also bringing back all the goofy cars and trucks from Burnout 3 instead of focusing on just race cars.

Theres very little to show from the game now, but considering how good the previous games looked on PS2, theres little doubt they’ll blow away Motorstorm. And the new physics engine controlling everything (not just your car) definitely should yeild some more interesting crashes. Release date is set for summer, which is just the kind of excuse I need to stay inside when the weather is actually hospitable in Wisconsin.

Oh, and the series will continue on PSP and PS2 since that console still has some life left in it. Burnout: Dominator will be out in March. Dominator is being developed in house by EA and not the series creators Criterion Games, so it’s hard to say if it will offer any innovation or just more tracks. Either way, anyone who didn’t make the next-gen jump will have a pretty good game to play.

From a couple smaller fan forums comes fresh looks at resin prototypes for 2 of the biggest and most talked about Transformers figures for the new movie.

Gen1TF and Nuklear Power have diverging looks at what may be the Optimus Prime that will populate toy shelves this summer. Also, get a load of Megatron, who definitely takes after his Energon counterpart.

It’s nearly impossible to tell how big these resin prototypes are without comparison shots, but the level of detail leads me to believe we’re looking at something in the $40 range, like Transformer leaders of the last few years.

There’s been a lot of pictures floating around the net of various toys lately from this line, but I didn’t think many of them were that special until I saw these.