“That indian guy looks suspiciously like Frank Stallone,” My fiance noted quite accurately upon Armand Assante’s introduction. As you can infer, he’s quite italian looking, not in the least native.
And so it was that I was witness to Prophecy, which was not The Prophecy as I’d hoped, but one of the most horribly hilarous movies I’ve ever seen.
So yeah, with the Halloween holiday coming up, I set my DVR to record a ton of classics off Turner Classic Movies, and the decidedly less prestigious AMC. As a standard of comparison, TCM was running Hitchcock’s silent film “The Lodger” while AMC ran “Species II”
Now I don’t consider “Species” to be a classic, and the sequel you can probably infer is several magnitudes worse.
Anyway, This “Prophecy” doesn’t star Christopher Walken, but instead some weird beared guy, who works as an inner city doctor. He’s then called upon to help settle land dispute between some lumberjacks and native americans. So while this is I guess supposed to be a fish out of water story, he looks more out of place in the city than in the woods because of his odd Mountain Man looks.
At about the half hour mark I finally realize that “hey, this is the wrong damn movie” but we’re too far into it to turn back now, so we kept going.
Turns out the lumber company is poisoning the water with mercury. Mercury, which doesn’t make any sense to have in the water to assist in paper production. Mercury, which causes autism in infants but apparently gigantism in tadpoles and mutant horror in bears.
Bad Movies can take it from here. You especially want to see the exploding sleeping bag.
“Prophecy” is directed by John Frankenheimer, who helmed the political classic “The Manchurian Candidate” and the Ben Affleck bomb “Reindeer Games”
I’d have to say the mutant bear ranks somewhere below Affleck.

I totally stole the idea from Will at our game site. The basic Idea is we will focus on a movie that might have slipped through the cracks.

Our first movie is Requiem for a Dream. Directed by Darren Aronofsky (PI) and staring Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans. The movie follows the four stars in a chaotic downward spiral of addiction. Not only chemical but also mental(television). Harry (Leto) and girlfriend Marion(Connelly) and Harry’s friend Tyrone(Wayans) are all Heroin junkies with the dream of a big score so they’ll become rich. Sara Goldfarb(Burstyn) is the films most sympathetic figure. Widowed and dealing with her son taking her television weekly to pawn for drug money. She becomes delusional and starts to believe she is going on a TV game show. After figuring out she can’t fit in her favorite red dress her television addiction leads her to taking speed pills to keep from eating and lose weight.
The movie is the most intense hour and forty minutes one is bound to experience. At almost ever turn you can’t wait for it to end but like a car accident you can’t look away. While requiem isn’t for everyone it is a roller coaster of emotion that must be seen to believe.

One would be remiss not to mention the wonderful score composed by Clint Mansell with the Kronos Quartet.

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Reports coming out of Botcon say there is a Transformers game in development to go with the movie, which is due July 4, 2007. Since this is well past the launch of the 360, PS3, or Rev, its safe to assume we’re looking at a next-gen title.
Hasbro isn’t ready to announce who is working on it, only that they are working on it. The bad news is that it won’t be done by melbourne house, who did an excellent job with Transformers on PS2 last May. The good news is, its unlikely we’ll get a repeat of the abomination
Transformers Tatakai, which only came on in Japan.
And for the un-initiated, the new movie IS based on the original Generation One characters. But if you dodged Transformers on PS2 because it features the Armada cast, you’re missing a hell of a shooter.

One of the all time greats of the survival horror genre. No evil corporation here, just strict psychological terror. The good thing about the plot is that it leaves so much to the gamer, spawning dozens of fan sites and plot analyses on gamefaqs.com. Complete with one of the most f’ed up plot twists of all time, ths game remains a benchmark for the genre along with Eternal Darkness and Resident Evil 4.

Special thanks to Ephrum from Xbox Live and Geezer Gamers for these glitch videos. He’s got more on the way, but any serious or amatuer Halo 2 players looking to expand into some of the crazier exploration methods in multiplayer maps (and wondering how friends and enemies end up in odd places) should watch these.

It made Michael King of the NY Jets 7 inches tall

I have yet to throw a gamecube game on here, so here goes an excellent one. In a genere cluttered with rip offs, here is an original survival horror game, for of all systems, gamecube. Silicon Knights has certainly outdid themselves thanks to the deep storyline, hallucinating effects, and the innovative “create-a-spell” system. Gamecube owners looking for a more “adult” experience will do well to pick this up.

IGN has the video presentation.
thoughts from nintendo power writer Steve Thomason
and of course, The Powet forum

While the world is still collectively reeling from this and everyone has blogged their opinion, I’ll toss in mine as well.

It is quite obvious to me that Nintendo has given up the battle with Sony and Microsoft. They cannot win playing by the rules that they themselves established 20 years ago. They went back to the drawing board and released the DS, which is literally a drawing board. It took some time to take off and start to find its niche, and it looks like great and inventive games are out or coming out soon for the DS. They’re truly making the PSP look like just a portable video player or just a portable playstation.

So now theres their new console, which they’re losing ground to the imperially established Sony and the increasingly aggressive Microsoft. They took a look at the competition and realized that if they couldn’t beat them they could at least shake up their own future enough so that they don’t even appear to be in competition anymore.

And thats whats happened. Nintendo is out of the race and in a class by themselves now. Third Party support for the gamecube was dwindling because the cube wasn’t capable of anything the PS2 or Xbox was. So now they have a console and a portable that make direct ports to other systems impossible! And, any game ported over from another system will have to be heavily reworked to make use of unique control schemes. This is it! Back to the days of the NES and Gameboy where the entire lineup is exclusive.

Weird control configurations are now standard in Arcades now. Sure, Tekken 5 is munching quarters without having anything original in control (hell you can plug a PS2 controller into the cabinet to use instead of the stick!), but the rest of the arcade is sit down racers, gun games, and dance games. And skee ball. But all of those offer control and experience unavailable on a home system (home racing wheels and guns are never as good anyway, and standard dance mats are considered a joke). Its that “I can’t play this at home” thing that keeps arcades open now, and Nintendo is going for an audience that will quickly realize that “hey, this game is not possible on Xbox 360 or PS3!”

Of course we still haven’t seen a Revolution game. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed this controller wasn’t premeired with a new Mario or something. And thats the only thing that can prove the concept. Possibilities are endless, but I remember how Mario 64 proved the analog stick to be a great idea. Revolution still has a chance to prove to the haters who say Nintendo has lost their minds as well as satisfy those who have been smoking the company dope for years. And if Nintendo has their way, they’ll also get people who’ve never gone into gaming before.