Today’s Highs
Choose Your Own Adventure Movie
SyFy Channel, in a fit of unlikely genius, has decided to let the internet create its next original movie. The stupidly-spelled network is launching a new website, B Movie Mogul, where fans can pitch and vote on film ideas, from plot and setting to dialogue and character deaths. SyFy seems to be severely underestimating the perversion potential of the internet at large if they think that any of the suggestions will be FCC appropriate. I give it about 15 minutes before 4chan finds the site and floods it with votes for Mega Shark Vs. Giant Pedobear or something.
Highs And Lows’ Low Price Alert
The Barnes And Noble bargain gods must be feeling generous, or glitchy, because there’s a massive sale on comics today. There’s nothing on the list I’ve been dying to read, but if you’ve been on the fence about Ultimate X-Men, 30 Days Of Night or Secret Invasion, this is the time to make the plunge. It’s also a great opportunity to sample something new, like Teenagers From Mars, or learn from the classics, like the Windsor McCay collection. Or, if you don’t read comics yourself, to pick up manga in bulk to appease any tween girls in the household. Just steer clear of Oldboy.
Today’s Lows
Alpha And Omega Is A Load Of Kappa
Okay, I know that I’m really not the target audience for Alpha and Omega, since I’m not a 6 year old who’s been Ritalin’d into a coma. So I’m not going to rag on it too badly, other than saying that just because something is animated, in 3-D, or for kids, does not excuse the fact that it sucks. There’s been so many high-quality children’s movies out as of late (look at the ridiculously positive reviews Toy Story 3 has been getting) that this should really go without saying, but it doesn’t. While Alpha and Omega is technically a Lions Gate film, I keep getting reminded of the ‘Difference Between Pixar and Dreamworks’ chart.
Kids are really, really easy to entertain, and this encourages a lot of people who make kids films to get lazy. You can get away with showing kids a lot of sub-par movies by sticking in fart jokes and rapping animals and Robin Williams. (The whole reliance on celebrity voices thing doesn’t make any sense to me though, why would kids care that Danny Glover and Dennis Hopper are in a film?) It’s perfectly understandable why parents want to distract their offspring with movies, whether they’re Citizen Kane or not, just to get a few hours piece and quiet. But showing your kids only movies like this one, movies that are nothing but pop-culture references and wacky facial expressions is like trying to raise them on nothing but movie popcorn.
