Since the alphabet is the building block of our language, the Powet Alphabet is the building block of what makes us geeks.

Apathy. Greed. Corruption. Power. Hope.
Batman Beyond.
Courage. Honor. Justice.

These are the words that flash by during the opening credits of Batman Beyond. The series takes place in a not too distant future where corporate greed and power have taken over. Bruce Wayne has hung up the cowl, giving up his life as Batman, for reasons only partially explained in the two-part series opener. Further reasons would be hinted at in many episodes, but we wouldn’t really get an idea until the straight-to-DVD movie, Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker was released.
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Earlier this week, I featured one of the more recent Syphon Filter entries. This week’s Lost Classic features an earlier entry in the series, Syphon Filter 3. SF3 was the last game in the series to be featured on the PS1, and it had to be delayed due to the 9/11 terrorist attacks (the original box art featured protagonists Gabe Logan and Lian Xing jumping from an exploding building). Thankfully it didn’t take too long for the game to be released, and players got another explosive chapter in the popular espionage saga.
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This week I’m looking at the new generation of movie games starting with the high quality Wolverine, the creative Ghostbusters, and the action packed Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen.

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Our nation’s birthday was this past Saturday, so in celebration, this week’s $20GOTW and Lost classics will feature games based on Sony’s Syphon Filter, a franchise about keeping the world safe from terrorism. When it debuted on the original Playstation in the late 90s, Syphon Filter gave players its own brand of espionage action. It may not have been Metal Gear Solid, but Syphon Filter was the closest thing players got to playing through an episode of 24. Syphon Filter’s storyline covered 3 PS1 games and a PS2 entry which featured online play. In 2006, Sony bought Syphon Filter to the Playstation Portable, creating one of the best games available on the system.
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Yes this trailer for this summer’s GIJOE: Rise Of Cobra direct from Japan (called “G.I.???!”) has the first real look at Joseph Gordon Levitt as “The Doctor” or as we know him, Cobra Commander.

Its about 6 seconds into the video. Blink and you missed it. Don’t blink and you’ll wish you had.

Heres a still… [Read the rest of this entry…]

Hasbro has started a promotion for the new GI Joe: Rise of Cobra movie. The promotion allows you to create your own custom joe character/figure on their website. Grand prize winners will get their character made as an actual 3 3/4 inch figure.

All you have to do is go to this link and start the character creation in the wizard. After you get the figure looking the way you want it, you’ll then enter in that character’s story. The character above was the one I created, but I was too lazy to make up a story for her. This is a pretty neat idea and I’m glad Hasbro is leveraging their fairly standard gi joe body types and accessories for something cool like this.

Again, contest can be found here: http://hasbro.promotions.com/gijoecobra/

Since the alphabet is the building block of our language, the Powet Alphabet is the building block of what makes us geeks.

Arrested Development was a sitcom on FOX. Wait, don’t go away, its really funny!

The Bluth family was very wealthy. Until father George (Jeffrey Tambor) is arrested for fraud and is sent to prison. The family’s assets are frozen and they’re more or less forced to live like regular people. For a time anyway, the show kinda spirals out of control in strange directions a lot and its hard to explain unless you’d seen all that came before it.

Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) is the central character of the show. He’s the most responsible and rational member of the family, and thus as the viewer the one you’re most likely to relate to. He’s a single father with a son played by Michael Cera, George Michael Bluth. Michael also has a brother, a professional magician named George Oscar Bluth (nick named Gob, presumabley because theres so many Georges around) and is portrayed by Will Arnett. Then theres Lindsay the sister and her husband Tobias (Portia Di Rossi and David Cross), brother Buster (Tony Hale), and… well the cast is huge, but they all get their time. If you’d prefer a less verbose introduction, watch this clip.

Yes that is the voice of Ron Howard, icon of the sitcom, narrating the series. Howard’s influence no doubt kept the show on the air for 3 seasons, and also inspired some its most notable guest stars, such as Liza Minelli, Henry Winkler, and Charlize Theron.

The Bluth family dealt with their father’s imprisonment and keeping the company in business all while living in the model home for a barren real estate project. While GOB would frequently be seen in a Segway scooter, Micheal’s primary form of transportation was the “Stair Car” which was used for deboarding the company plane.

Various family members take control of the company, and run-ins with the law are frequent. Its a kind of hard show to describe if you don’t start at the beginning. In a way, its like some anime series where if you jump in around episode 300, you have no idea whats going on. Except Arrested Development gets that complex around episode 4 or 5.

Its a rare comedy series that strayed far from the episodic nature of most series. Very few (if any) single episodes functioned as a standalone work, since the layered and constantly developing characters built on jokes from show to show. A joke about “Club sauce” in season 1 is repeated in season 3. More often, a joke would be called forward, making subsequent viewings of an episode funnier now that the truth about a character or event is revealed, such as Charlize Theron’s character Rita and her true identity.

Fox pulled the plug midway through the third season and the final 4 episodes were run on a single night. Rumors persisted that a premium cable network such as Showtime or HBO would pick up the show, and even now theres a lot of talk about a movie. But even if none of this ever comes to pass, Arrested Development stand as one of the most ground breaking comedy series since Monty Python. Consistently funny, very rewatchable, and one of the greatest casts ever assembled. All episodes are available on DVD.

Go ahead and buy ’em. Its far from the lamest thing ever put on tape.

or watch the entire series for free (in the US anyway) on Hulu.