You don't really need another person telling you how great The Dark Knight is, but I felt obliged to chime in, since, like everyone else, I enjoyed it so damned much. A dark, epic, gorgeously crafted masterpiece. It's a complex crime thriller that doesn't pander, and never for one moment feels like a "comic book movie," although it's probably the best "comic book movie" ever made. And yes, Heath Ledger is fucking fantastic as the Joker (although Nicholson's will always hold a special place in my heart). Be sure to see it in IMAX if you haven't yet - they actually filmed a good chunk of the movie in IMAX, and it looks stunning (for those who don't know, usually when you see Hollywood movies at the IMAX theatre, they're just blowing up the 35mm print, and it ends up looking blurry - real IMAX film is 70mm, and the extra clarity and detail make a tremendous difference).

On the complete opposite side of the spectrum though, make sure you don't miss WALL-E. I have a long-standing affection for Pixar, and regularly praise them as some of the smartest storytellers of our generation. Pixar's films defy conventions by ignoring the frantic pacing, slapstick comedy, and disposable pop culture references that plague most modern animated features. They are timeless pieces of art, stories existing in their own realities, patched together from a sort of communal (American) experience that everyone can relate to. They reference icons and aesthetics that are familiar to all, and will likely never grow old. They defy the conventional ways that mass media tries to reach children, avoiding fads of the moment in favor of classic artistry. No other filmmakers respect the intelligence of a family audience like Pixar does, and the results speak for themselves. Who else could pull off a post-apocalyptic science fiction romantic comedy staring mute robots and inspired by Charlie Chaplin's silent films? That's pretty much exactly what WALL-E is, and it's brilliant. Funny, endearing, timeless and timely, with some strangely pointed and hilarious social commentary at its core. It's also one of the most beautiful-looking films I've ever seen. The level of artistry on display is beyond anything else that's being done in the movies right now. It's interesting, actually - WALL-E is an example of the very best of what computer graphics have contributed to art, and The Dark Knight is one of the best recent examples of how much better a live action film can be for avoiding computer graphics. Spielberg and Lucas, take note: if you want a building to blow up in your movie, tell ILM to take the day off and go blow up a fucking building. That's how Chris Nolan rolls.

P.S. - Here is a nice high-quality stream of Presto, the new Pixar short that plays before WALL-E. I love the homage to classic Friz Freleng Looney Toons physical comedy. And while I'm at it, if you've somehow been living under a rock and have never given Pixar movies a chance, or have mistakenly confused them for disposable kiddy nonsense like Ice Age and Madagascar and Shrek 3... Do yourself a favor and dive into Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille. Pay attention to not only the stunning level of detail and artistry, but the wealth of art and design influence, and the lack of cheap pop culture references which, like the classic Disney animated films of yesteryear, ensure they will be just as enjoyable many decades from now. And while you're at it, check out the amazing and under-appreciated masterpiece The Iron Giant - probably the last great traditionally-animated film ever made, and helmed by Brad Bird, who later went on to do The Incredibles and Ratatouille.

P.P.S. - Speaking of Pixar, the new "4-D" Toy Story ride at Disneyland - er, California Adventure - is fucking awesome. It's really well made and incredibly fun - worth admission to the park just for that. I have Disneyland season passes so I'm definitely going back to try and beat my high score.

P.P.P.S. - Is anyone excited for the X-Files movie on Friday? As much as I love the show, I can't help but worry this movie is going to feel as soulless and unnecessary as a certain other recent franchise resurrection. Hopefully I'll be pleasantly surprised.

It's taken quite a while, but as of today, the iPhone has finally lived up to its true potential and become the JesusPhone. I'm not even talking about the new iPhone 3G (although I can't wait to get one), I'm talking about the 2.0 software out today for all iPhones which unlocks the long-awaited App Store and its treasure chest of awesome. I got it running earlier today and have been installing apps and games like crazy. In a matter of hours my little phone has turned from a great communications device into the most useful thing I could ever hope to have in my pocket (I think there's an opportunity for a sexual innuendo here, but I don't have the energy right now).

Aside from the expected (and useful) clients for AIM, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, MySpace, Flickr, and other services, and great games like Super Monkey Ball, there are fantastic free weather and news applications, a sexy remote iTunes controller, mobile Pandora radio, and a shitload more. "Save Benjis" will search for the lowest prices on products - a handy reference if you're out at a store wondering if you can get something cheaper online. "Shazam" will listen to the ambient sound around you and identify whatever song is playing - I tested it in the grocery store and it worked like a charm! The "Midomi" app will do the same thing with songs you hum into the phone. "Box Office" is an incredibly useful app for movie reviews/showtimes/tickets, IGN's video game review app is handy if you're out browsing for some new games, and "Band" turns your iPhone into a full-featured recording studio. The list goes on and on, but as a frequent traveler, what has me the most excited is the huge variety of great travel tools, like a location-enabled Yelp client that will tell you the best restaurants, bars, and other services close to your current location. The "Urbanspoon" app takes a quirkier approach, giving you random nearby restaurant suggestions when you shake the phone. There's also geo-tagging for your photos, and location-aware social networks. If you've been on the fence about getting an iPhone, now is definitely the time.

Oh, and the best part of all is that Apple clearly hasn't been shy about letting pretty much anyone develop iPhone software, resulting in some absurdly useless/awesome free apps, like "PhoneSaber," which turns your iPhone into a lightsaber. Well, okay, it shows a picture of a lightsaber and makes sound effects when you swing the phone around. That's literally all it does. Even more bizarre is "World 9," an extremely Japanese app which serves but one simple purpose: When you jump, it makes the jumping sound from Super Mario Bros. Pointless and brilliant. I'm going to make a Demonbaby.com Procrastination Status Report app that simply displays the number of days since the last update to the main blog. It'll be a huge hit.

If you aren't playing with it already, the Spore Creature Creator is a remarkably brilliant, strangely addictive little toy for building highly-customizable 3D creatures. It's the first tiny little part of Spore, the giant universe-building game from the creator of The Sims coming out later this year. The Creature Creator is amazingly intuitive - literally anyone could sit in front of it for a couple minutes and come away with a unique creature that will walk and groan and dance no matter how many limbs, heads, or eyes it has (or doesn't have). Everything is done with simple dragging and dropping. If you give the creature a dozen legs, it will walk like a caterpillar. Don't give it any legs, and it will squirm like a snake. Just one leg? It'll hop. And on and on, resulting in well over a million completely unique creatures being created by players so far. You can download a free trial version for Mac or PC, but it has very few parts to work with, so if you enjoy it even a little it's worth throwing down ten bucks for the full version.

Someone from EA was kind enough to send me an early copy to mess around with a couple weeks ago, and although I haven't really had the time to flesh out any insanely cool creatures, it's become my go-to time waster, taking five minute creature breaks here and there and seeing what I can come up with. You can download some of the ones I've made so far here, including a lovable mascot for this site, Demonbaby.

Naturally, when given a new creative tool, the first thing any reasonable person must do is investigate its opportunities for immaturity and vulgarity, and promptly exploit them. In the case of Spore, the opportunities are tremendous, and of course the first thing I did was create a giant penis monster. So did everyone else on the internet, so penis monsters lost their appeal pretty quickly. Next up on the immaturity checklist was finding creative uses for the creature parts that look suspiciously like nipples and buttholes (the buttholes even spew purple gas clouds!!). Among other things, I made a big fat naked woman with giant floppy breasts and an angry butthole, and named her Helga - click the thumbnail to see her in all her beauty:



I guess I was supposed to warn you that the picture is NSFW, but this website is apparently blocked by most corporate firewalls anyway, because it's apparently "tasteless," although I can't imagine how anyone ever came to that conclusion. Anyway, here's a video of Helga's pendulous boobs flopping around as she dances:


Unfortunately I couldn't make her fart in the movie, but trust me, she does it spectacularly. So, quite pleased with myself, I proudly submitted Helga to my Spore profile, predicting rave reviews. Within minutes, however, I was informed that I'd been reported, and poor Helga had been removed for violating some sort of terms that bar nudity from the site. For a game about biology and evolution, I find it amusing that nipples and buttholes, supplied in the game, are fair game to put on any kind of creature you'd like, unless that creature starts to resemble a human, in which case nipples and buttholes are a big no-no. Can't let innocent children discover the horrible truth about the basic functions of every human body! Anyway, in protest I created a creature made up entirely of huge jiggling boobies - The Hideous Booby Monster:


Strangely, this creature was removed from the site even faster than the first. I guess it and Helga will be resigned to live on in the seedy Spore underbelly of farting penis monsters and naked booby creatures. ...I wonder if I'm ever going to grow up?
If you have the Creature Creator, you can download Helga here and The Hideous Booby Monster here.

Oh, and EA also invited me to take part in an odd website called Sporevote, where people vote on creatures made by C-list celebrities and obscure internet personalities. They were a little late getting me the software, so I was never really properly listed on the site and my profile is still sans creature - but hell, go and vote for me anyway, on the blind faith that my creature would be cooler than MC Hammer's. At the moment you can find me in the "More Spore" category, and you can vote as maaaaannny times as you want.

And please, if you have any cool Spore creatures - especially of the vulgar, grotesque, or eye-rollingly immature variety - post them in the comments.

Every time a celebrity dies, Americans seem to get all faux-sentimental, as if it's some great tragedy that one of our plastic idols has been unjustly taken from us. But usually it's not sad, it's not a tragedy - because in most cases celebrities are just shitty people who happen to be on television, and there's no reason to mourn their deaths any more than the thousands of other non-televised people who died that day. Like, remember how everyone got all pouty when Heath Ledger died, pretending like they really gave a fuck about him up until he keeled over? Dude was a great actor, sure, and he's going to make a hell of a Joker, but really, so the fuck what? Did you know him? Did he really have any personal impact on your life? Plenty of talented, interesting people die every minute of far more tragic circumstances than popping enough pills to kill a horse, and you certainly didn't mourn their deaths. This guy was good in Brokeback Mountain so now you're gonna get all worked up about it? Please. People just like having shit to pretend to care about.

Anyway, all this is to say that every once in a while we have the very rare occasion where a really remarkable person dies who just happens to also be a celebrity. George Carlin was one of those people. A brilliant comedian and social commentator, his humor and his philosophy and his ideas were much-needed beacons of well-phrased common sense in a fucked up world, and he only seemed to get better with age. When someone like him dies before his time, we've lost a lot more than a good performance in some upcoming movie. If you're not specifically familiar with Carlin's material, I'm confident you'd enjoy his recent counter-culture monologues, since this blog pretty much just rips them off. Among my favorites are this one about who really controls America, and this one about rights, specifically you not having any. This page has a collection of some of his other classics, like The Ten Commandments and "religion is bullshit". I also like this interview clip where he bums out a cheery morning news show by proclaiming that America is "circling the drain." It's a shame America outlived you, George...

There are a lot of attractive people in the world, a lot of talented people, and a lot of loud people who love to draw attention to themselves. There are, however, a very precious few who see the world both as it is and as it should be, and aren't afraid to talk about it. Those people should be celebrated.

Dear Hasbro... Given that you've been sculpting Harrison Ford's face onto cheap Han Solo action figures for somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty years now, you'd think you could come up with something that looks ever *remotely* like Indiana Jones for your new Raiders Of The Lost Ark action figure. It's not a bad figure, and it looks fine from a distance, but upon closer inspection, why does Indy's face bear a striking resemblance to batshit-crazy former Presidential candidate and douchebag extraordinaire Mike Huckabee? To emphasize my point, please see this comparison photo where I have poorly Photoshopped a fedora onto Mike Huckabee's head:


Worst of all, this figure isn't meant to be 60 year old Indiana Jowls from the new movie, it's meant to be absurdly-good-looking 40 year old Indy from Raiders.

I wonder how many Indiana Jones related posts I can make in a row, while still not updating the main blog?

I'm a sucker for toys, but I haven't really bought many lately, mostly because I'm running out of places to put the fuckers. However, I couldn't resist ordering another batch of Hasbro's absurdly adorable geek chic Mighty Muggs figures. Sort of affordable vinyl toys for the masses, the line puts its sharply-designed, anime-influenced stamp on a range of popular characters. I already have Darth Vader, Boba Fett, and a storm trooper from the Star Wars line - their sturdy, striking design and perfect size (about 6" tall) makes them great little desk ornaments - they even have movable heads and limbs and fun accessories. Today I finally broke down and ordered Spidey, Venom, Wolverine, and The Hulk from the Marvel line (Iron Man is pretty rad as well).

Some of the likenesses are genius - Lando Calrissian's big stupid grin cracks me up every time. But the one they really nailed is Harrison Ford's trademark smirk in the Indiana Jones Mighty Muggs coming out in July. It suddenly seems that there is nothing I desire more than the Mola Ram figure:


He's holding a human heart!!

I wish they had one of these for Batman, but it seems that DC has taken its own strange path into vinyl toys, releasing this absolutely hideous Batman figure.

P.S. - On the subject of Indy toys, can you really live without two of your childhood icons finally combining? I know I couldn't resist.

SPOILERS BELOW!

So I saw Indy again. I saw it with a more enthusiastic Friday crowd (none of whom were donning fedoras), and a friend seeing it for the first time who genuinely enjoyed it. And you know what? I definitely liked it better the second time around. If you were bummed out or disappointed after seeing it, try to catch it again soon, and you'll find that now that you know what to expect, you're less distracted by the awkward moments and can get lost in it a bit more (read my initial reactions here if you haven't yet).

My friend who I saw it with was smiling and laughing throughout, and told me after that of course it wasn't a perfect film, but it was fun, and it had the spirit of the old movies, and that was the most he could have hoped for, given what's been passing for action/adventure movies in recent years. My friend hadn't seen the old Indy movies recently, and was just enjoying this one for what it was, measuring it against films of today rather than the previous three Indy classics. And it's true: Just by virtue of it being Indiana Jones, it has a spirit of adventure and a glorious detachment from reality, from cynicism, and from pop culture that simply doesn't exist in movies anymore. In retrospect, watching the old movies right before seeing this one was probably a bad idea on my part, but I don't think it's unreasonable to hold it up to the high standards set by its predecessors - especially after two decades in the making.

I actually fully support the extraterrestrial plotline (although I strongly object to the last-minute appearance of a ridiculous CGI alien), and I've come to think the first half of the movie is very good and in perfect company with the three previous films (minus the still-terrible fridge incident), but after Marion shows up the movie still loses me. Nothing against Marion, but she would have been more effective as a cameo, and after she comes aboard the rest of the movie is five people - most of whom I've been given no reason to care about - just kind of riding a roller coaster: Coasting from one dip and turn to another, but unlike previous Indy roller coasters, this time everyone feels like they're safely strapped in at all times. It feels empty to me, and, as others have said, wholly devoid of tension and danger. There seem to be a few reasons for that, but mostly it's the CGI and digital compositing, which fits with the Indy aesthetic like sandals on a goldfish. Perhaps unfairly, I was expecting vintage movie magic. Based on what he'd said in interviews, I was expecting Spielberg to defy modern action movie conventions and make a genuine old-fashioned stunt show. Keeping the movie within the boundaries of what could be done without CGI would have been the most daring and interesting thing Spielberg could have done in 2008, and it would have ensured that no matter how weak the script was, the fantastic scenes that make Indy movies what they are would have had just the right feel. Instead, the second half of the movie feels lazy, employing cheap-looking computer tricks so Spielberg wouldn't have to leave his cushy Hollywood soundstage. I love computers, and I love all the places they've taken special effects. But as others have pointed out, computer effects have their place, and Indy, with its dusty stone surfaces and exotic locales, is not that place. The problem with CGI is that when anything's possible, filmmakers seem to feel the need to go way over the top just because they can (I'm looking at you, Peter Jackson), or take a cheap but less satisfying route just because it's possible (I'm looking at you, George Lucas). It's technology creating ideas, rather than ideas creating technology, which is ironic because Spielberg and Lucas are the two people who defined the modern blockbuster by creating many incredible technologies to bring their ideas to life. That said, I have no trouble putting most of the blame on Lucas for my computer-generated grievances with Indy. After all, Spielberg tends to use special effects *extremely* effectively and appropriately in his films, and he has been making very good movies lately. Lucas, on the other hand, well... we all know what he's been up to.

In the comments on my previous post, a woman chimed in that her two little boys, aged 5 and 9, absolutely loved the film. Just like when I saw Temple Of Doom at age 5 and thought it was the greatest movie ever made, these kids left the theatre pretending to be Indy, completely ecstatic. She said in that respect maybe the movie had done its job by inspiring the next generation of kids and creating their future nostalgia. Those kids will one day be blogging about how much better Crystal Skull was than Indy 8, where a 40 year old, 100% computer-generated Shia LaDingdong tries to rescue Vietnamese artifacts from the menacing army of the Viet Cong. I'm very happy that Crystal Skull succeeded on that level - Indiana Jones is a far more fitting hero for imaginative youngsters than most of what Hollywood offers to kids, so if propping up his corpse for another few passable movies will continue to inspire young adventurers, then I guess I can live with that. But for me, I'll still be looking for movies that, like the first three, work just as well from start to finish for a twenty eight year old with a critical eye as they do for a five year old who just wants to have fun - that offer a great deal of fun without resorting to silliness... and I'll always wish Indiana Jones had boldly preserved the greatest artifact of them all: Movies that are made with real sets, and real props, and real stunts... and real gophers.

Sadly, until some mystical power melts George Lucas's face off and rids us of his insanity, none of that is likely to happen, and future Indy movies (oh yes, they're coming) will probably continue to have their integrity chipped away bit by bit until they're incorporating fart jokes and talking donkeys. Hell, Lucas hasn't even hit senility yet, imagine what's going to happen then!

Thank God Harrison Ford is still fucking awesome.