6 worst possible versions of characters at 8:23 PM

Chip and Dale: The Movie!

Characters need to be reinvented. You can't drop old timey Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes into a world of CSI Miamis and Opium illegality. Society changes, and even in a period piece, our attitudes towards things ever reflect on stories.

But this is not what this list is about. This is a list of people completely missing what things where about. This is a list of people who WANT to work on the material, in the same way a termite works on wood: eating it and shitting it.

6) Hellboy's finger family.

You gotta hand it to them...

Hellboy is a cult classic comic created by Mike Mignola about a demon raised by a human from childhood who fights supernatural threats. It was pretty popular in the 80's with some early 2000's popularity boost by some damn fine movies Guillermo del Toro made. So obviously they made a video about him and his made up satanic family singing a kiddie song as they wander the wrecked remains of Post-Ap Earth (does anyone say Post-Ap? It seems they should).

You see, there is a channel in Youtube whose exclusive domain is making half-hearted animations of popular franchises set to the same recording of the Finger Family song. That's all they do. And honestly it's not that weird. My instinct is to believe these are some foreigners with more grasp of adobe flash than of english, trying to show their kids some english.  And if you MUST do that, why not use the Ninja Tortoises and Spider-Man?

But then there's Hell Boy. I mean, "Super Red Boy".

 After so much fighting evil, Hellboy grew a stache and settled down with a demoness, and spawned a trio of demon kids, all sporting the long horns he painstainkingly removes to avoid becoming a humanity ending hell terror.

If you think they didn't know that bit of Hellboy canon when designing Mommy Finger and Baby Finger, then why are they standing in a dilapidated city?

5) Breezie's Back, Yo!

People love to complain about Sonic. And you know they do when they complain about things in Sonic they'd be praising anywhere else. "Boo Hoo Sonic has too many characters!" X-Men has too many characters, and nobody complains about THAT.

And it's not like every character comes back every time. When's the last time you saw Ray the Flying Squirrel, or Fang the Sniper, or Breezie the Hedgehog?

What, Breezy? She was just a character from the less fondly remembered Sonic Cartoon. She was a robot built by Robotnik to entrap Sonic with her feminine wiles. She was pretty...well endowed.

It's okay, they're both technically looking at her hair.

My point is, there's no way in hell Breezy's gonna come back. Just kidding. She came back last year, to the Archie comics series. She now looks like this.

Man, even chick heaven has fallen angels.

Now, Archie people, I don't want to tell you how to do your job, but...Isn't this character missing....EVERYTHING that made Breezy? And I'm not just talking about her fun parts. This version of Breezie is not only NOT a Jessica Rabbit send off, but she's also NOT a ROBOT, and not...ANYTHING. I mean, I know I'm complaining about her not being essentially not like a bad character, but how cheap are you to just slap the Breezy name onto some wholesale new green hedgehog? Humph.

4) A TV show pilot inspires elaborate animated porn.

Way to lay it on thick, Nickelodeon.

The Modyfiers only ever had one episode. For whatever reason Nickelodeon didn't feel there was money in a Mod inspired cartoon. Maybe it's cuz it's been nearly 50 years since mod aesthetics where in. I can't say.

However, it must have been something, because it attracted the attention of Zone, an animator known for making animations I can't show you about Teen Titans, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, and others being turned into pornography, going so far as to selectively use audio clips to uh, make the experience more immersive.

And, you know, tip of the hat to you, Zone. Every time I see someone do that kind of thing, I wish it where you doing it. If it's bad, I don't know, but you're the best at it. You're the Michael Jordan of making it look like Cartoon Network went crazy and decided Cyborg raping Jinx is an okay thing to make.

This is a screen from the cartoon, por si acaso.

But anyway, Zone made an elaborate animation of that ONE EPISODE, managed to some how cut in the dialogue and...It's crazy! Like, Even if you want to fuck a cartoon, why something so obscure, I can't wrap my head around it.

I also can't SHOW you it, but it makes a quick, relatively safe for work cameo in this vid. So basically there's almost as many minutes of Modyfiers cartoon as there are of Modyfiers Parody Porn.

3) The Super Serious Sexual Escapades of...Billy and Mandy?

Fanfictioners gotta fan, awright? I get it. I'd rather remember I liked Dinosaucers than watch a crudely drawn Allo and Ghengis Rex make out, but uh, I'm not everybody.

With that said I'm a big believer in that, even if you're not doing canon, you should approach the work in as similar a tone as possible. I mean, youre story about Mahoney dieing and Tallbooth  avenging him using Soul Edge can be great, but it won't ever be very Police Academy. Or...AT ALL.


But if there's a show known for it's dark humor  and zany nonsense, how far would you go to make a spinoff fan comic that completely removes the humor and zany parts? How abut writing a comic for years?

Well, there's a fancomic for that.


Yes, finally the story can be told. Of how Mandy managed to get Grim in the sack  and bone him, and they had a kid, and she's a fucking psycho. That fits the tone of the cartoon perfectly.

And if this where a single story, like that stupid fanfiction where Jade from Mortal Kombat wrote to Seung Mina about how it was hard to be in school and be bullied, despite the fact neither of these are at school age, from the same  plane of existence, and  Jade is known for ripping people apart, I'd understand. But no, this is a long form version of that, with admitedly good effort put on the art of it, to tell a story. This story.

What's the matter, Bleedman? Manga Brad Pitt too tough for you?

NOOOO!


2)Magneto, Old Pest

Magneto is often considered one of the X-Men's greatest villains, if not one of the greatest overall villains. Over the years the character has gone from a pretty cookie cutter world conqueror to a sympathetic character who is just as likely to rip Wolverine's bones out and drown the planet, to a pretty stand up guy who just wants freedom from oppresion and the love of his estranged children.

But this was before most of that. Before he cosplayed as the King of Spain, he was a simpler character. But still, his appearance in the old timey Fantastic 4 cartoon was still pretty out of character. For could you picture the Master of Magnetism...

Terrorizing a gas station because they don't believe his flying car doesn't need gas?

Displaying his power over no parking rules by declaring that the sign offends him, and limply taking it down?

Beating Reed Richards in a fight to become the leader of the Fantastic 4, as part of his scheme to con the Fantastic Four into sort of letting him steal some money?

Being fooled by a wooden gun into thinking he was powerless, then immediately being put into metal cuffs and put into a patrol car?

No. Not even early Magneto would have done that? Who the hell writes this crap? Why didn't Stan Lee step in an intervene?

Expaylscior!

Oh, shit.


1)Blackheart, aspiring My Chemical Romance member

Here's something Batzarro really hates: When you take a character with striking visual design elements, and say: "fuck this, guy in a suit."

I understand you don't always want to blow your budget away on expensive prosthetics and CGI. But if I come to your Ghost Rider movie expecting a guy who looks like THIS

And you just give me this...

That makes the movie worst. I mean...I admit that all I know about Blackheart comes from Marvel vs Capcom 2. I don't know if he's got a great personality.  But this is the antagonist of a guy who looks like this.


Is this seriously the best you could conjure up to menace? He doesn't look like a demon, he looks peter parker got bitten by a radioactive Hot Topic.

But Let's not be unfair. Maybe that's just his human form. He does have a final demon form during the climax.

Nope. Don't see it.

And what really bothers me is that, in reviews of people who don't know anything about Blackheart's appearance, they don't find him that great at all. Which means that you threw just about the only thing that could have saved this character and replaced it with NOTHING. Blach.

They're killing all fan art and I'm helping them! at 8:05 PM

Hey, guys, look...I may have used the term "Fanficky" as a pejorative in the past, but...I would never turn you up guys. I just don't have that kind of spite. Just because I don't LIKE your stuff doesn't mean I would volunateer to take it away from you.

What do I mean, by that? Well, there's a new international treaty  called the Trans Pacific Partnership moving along. One that would basically force the participating countries to make laws allowing anyone, not just the copyright holder, to make laws that enable not just the owner of a copyright to sue for copyright infringement.

I mean, if they passed a law like that (And they'd have to if they sign a treaty.) I could legally sue you for creating a fanfiction where Wordgirl is losing a fight to the Crystal Gems, even if PBS and Warner probably don't give a shit about it.



It's kind of brilliant, actually. Morally corrupt and not at all related to what copyright is about, but brilliant. You conscript the people to snitch on themselves and  sue themselves. They don't spend money on it and they don't get any bad press. It's a very Castro Cuba thing to do. I don't even know if I should go into detail of why doing that is litterally the opposite of what copyright should do, or how bad it would be for creativity if anyone who so wanted could put you in a legal lock without really having to have a real reason. Maybe you can imagine it.  Imagine if you anyone could just start getting Pewdiepie, Nostalgia Critic, and Fan- Fiction.com erased from the map just because they didn't like it.  Imagine. Do you think they would?

There's only one problem: How are people gonna know they can screw each other? There needs to be a campaign to get them in the spirit of ruining each other's abilities as a prosumer, so that poor old Megacorps may thrive. And who better to provide it than me? That's why I'm offering them this posters, to get things rolling. No charge, Big Media. We love you!

Of course, this laws would be a tragedy for the internet, if mean spirited people get your video AND channel taken down with uncontested claims of copyright all over the place. But look at the bright side.

You could Sue Johnny Test's makers  on the name of Marvel comics and Sony, who own the copyright to The Malibu Comics and movie Men in Black, to get them to stop using Agent Black and Agent White. You could Sue Marvel because the relation between Deadpool and Deathstroke is totally breaking copyright. You could use DC for putting Superman's leg hidden on a cover.  You could Sue Disney over Atlantis. You could sue Metallica for ripping people off.

And in fact, we should. I mean, it's only fair. It's what they want, right? A world where people sue to defend copyright without asking. If you know of anytime a company has plagiarized another, you should probably write them a letter like this:

Dear _________

I am thankfull for the laws that are being put in place by the  Trans-Pacific Partnership, that will allow me to sue over copyright infringement even if the copyright holder will not. I will use them to sue you over _____________ the very day the laws are put in place, because it breaches the copyright of _______________.  It's kind of out of my hands. I can't stop an International Treaty, after all. If someone would, though, I would not be able to sue.

Sincerely _________________

You could probably contact Disney over here, and Warner over Here,if you wanted to.


I mean, I want to believe we can do more than sit and watch them do this. I'm just a small blog, run by a poor guy. But maybe if this message gets around we can stop everywhere on the Internet becoming like Youtube.

How to get Dr Doom right, a Tutorial. at 9:17 AM

Take it easy, Afghan Girl

News has come from the front that the new Fantastic 4 movie everyone expected to suck sucked as bad as everyone expected. Among other things, the one that especially jumps at me is that they apparently bungled Doom yet again, and not even in the way I knew they would. Apparently this is a telekinetic, fused to his suit, hates humanity and wants to destroy them all so he can get some peace and quiet in an alternate dimension. Motivation? Ruined. Duration of fight? Ruined. Doombots? No.

So, seeing how this is the third time Fox has completely failed to understand what makes Dr Doom a compelling character at various levels, it's time for me to do a tutorial, from someone who has not read a single Fantastic 4 comic in his life.

1) Start out by looking for images of DR Doom.

 
When you hit the ones that aren't from your awful films, you'll notice that DR Doom is kind of a fusion character. His cape and clothes denote Medieval Royalty, yet his armor is technological and brutal. Like all good characters, Dr Doom's appearance says it all immediately. He's an aristocrat, yet he's not a soft man. He's old fashioned, but uses technology to advance himself. He likes to flaunt, but he hides more than he flaunts.

You see, certain characters like the Joker, are constantly reinvented to invoke certain things.  Jack Nicholson Joker and Heath Ledger Joker are very different characters, but they are both built around elements that makes people like the Joker. But if we removed all that, and made Joker into an arms dealer with no other connection to the character except he gets called Joker once or twice, then obviously it doesn't look like a reinvention of a character we know. It looks like you don't know what the character was in the first place.

Appearance IS important, especially if you're gonna rejigger the character everywhere else. If it doesn't look like Doom, doesn't act like Doom, then you can't get people excited for Doom being in your movie.

2) Look for some of the comics.

 Maybe you can get them on comic stores or...ask Marvel, I'm sure they'd love to show you some.

I know some details, like Doom's quest to rescue  his mother from Hell, are always gonna be bit too bizarre for movies. And yes, Doom IRL should just shut up about his face being deformed and get the plastic surgery he probably can afford on an evil dictator salary. Hell, we don't even have made up countries in  movies anymore, so the idea of this guy coming from Sokovia Latveria might be a bit of a hard pill to swallow.

But it's not THAT what you should be looking for.The comics can give you ideas for characterization. For example, in the Books, Doom is all about hating on dat Reed Richards. That's compelling. They're both basically on a similar intellectual level. But where Reed makes inventions for the good of mankind, Doom uses them more or less for personal gain and to get back at Reed. Reed has a surrogate family that is willing to to fight alongside him, while Doom is basically alone, even with his immense resources. That's contrast. Reed and him used to be friends, until Reed kind of ruined his life. Reed carries that guilt, Doom carries that resentment.  That's characterization gift wrapped and given to you, and you just leave it on the box, unnopened.

So what are you gonna do with that? He's a rich jerk and when he gains powers he becomes an ANGRY rich jerk. And then in the new one, he's a sociopath who gets brought to an experiment, making him a super powered sociopath. Joker wouldn't just show up at the end of the movie for a quick fight with Batman.  Why do that to Doom? Unlike the Joker, we've never actually HAD the straight take to contrast with the "reimagining". And built in fanbase also leads to built in EXPECTATION. Give us the straight fuckin' take already!

"You see, Batman, I am no longer going the be riddled with grief! Now I...am...the RIDDLER..."

3) Get someone with a voice.

I mean, not to knock on Julian MacMahon and Toby Kebbel. I'm sure they're great actors. But...let's look at Darth Vader.

Vader is rumored to be very directly  by Doom. Since no one even saw him without the mask until Jedi, there would have been no actual expectation of how he talked, and in fact, if they'd gone with the voice of the man behind the suit, well, it would have sounded like this.

So Lucas made a good decidfhjkdfld sorry, I had a bit of a shiver. Lucas made a good decision and dubbed his voice over with  James Earl Jones. And, he nailed it. He nailed the suave charm and the commanding force Vader had. He doesn't need 20 computer generated filters to inspire fear.

Doom needs a great voice. I don't care if in flashbacks Victor is John Leguizamo. When he put on the damn mask, you better be sure he's being voiced by a good actor. Maybe you can get Ron Pearlman, since he played a pretty good Dr Doom in Teen Titans.

4) Doom needs to be plotting, and it needs to be a good plot.

The first X-Men movie had a lot of flaws, but I think one of the things that was right about it was that Magneto had a plan. He had a plan, and everybody knew it. But nobody knew exactly what it was. It was all the more of a shock when that planned ended up involving Rogue and not Wolverine, as we where led to believe.

Dr Doom in these movies NEVER has a plan that makes you think "wow, this guy is devious!". He basically just wanted to bump off the 4 in movie 1, with no other stakes at hand. In movie 2 he basically wanted even more superpowers to again, try to wack the 4, and he wouldn't have even got to do it except General Idiot agreed to show him the Silver Surfer's board for no reason, and he more or less stole it like a druggie might steal your bike.

Again, does anyone in the new movie ever wonder what Victor is up to? I don't know. I'll find out when I pirate it next week, but it sure seems like he just wants to destroy the world. Because RULING the WORLD is such a SILLY concept, fufufufufufufufu.

Even if he Doesn't have Doombots or a Country to rule or a piece of the True Cross, Dr Doom should be devious. He's not about overpowering people with sheer force. He's not the fucking Juggernaut or Frieza. He's a MENTAL powerhouse.Is that really that hard to get?

5)Watch the Roger Corman movie

Ok, The Roger Corman movie was a laughing point for many of us just getting the internet in the early 2000's. "OMG, so stupid, I thought I was downloading the one with Jessica Alba, not this dreck. Hahahahahaha"

But as Silly and Bad as it was, it's kind of becoming  a sore point that that Ashcan movie made to keep the rights around is probably the more accurate version of F4 on live action yet. I mean, sure it's a no budget trainwreck, but they sure nailed Doom.

I mean, think about it. Dr Doom in there is the actual Doom, with the origin story and the mask. He lives in a castle. He plots his revenge against Reed. He's got kind of a good voice. And this movie was built in about a month with a shoe string budget. They didn't have the influence of the Ultimate F4 they've twice laid claim to in the newer versions. In fact, I would dare venture and say that Roger Corman probably knew Doom's story beforehand. With little time to even invent something new towards Doom, he probably went with the origin he already had, which is as compelling as anything you'll ever find: Revenge and Vindication.

6)You're not listening to a goddamn word I'm saying, are you?

You threw this thing together real quick to keep the rights, didn't you? We all know it. You didn't even touch the franchise in a decade, but as soon as that deadline was coming, you quickly wanted to reboot. You don't even care if it bombs, do you? DO YOU?

I know other people would say "give the rights back to Marvel" like you didn't just spend  $122 million to NOT give the rights back to Marvel. But at least pay attention to what Marvel is doing. You might earn something.

You don't HAVE to use the most popular villain on every version, you know? Take it easy on the Doom. Go ruin Moleman or something. We don't care and neither do you.

Seth Killian, Dave Sirlin, Rising Thunder, Fantasy Strike Know What's up at 7:55 PM

By this point, you may have forgotten about my editorial about how going down, downforward, forward, is holding us back, and that we need to tap on to our creativity to create new controllers for a genre that is slowly returning from dormancy, but not quite awake yet. And some of you thought I was crazy! But Seth Killian obviously doesn't.
 
His new robot themed fighter, Rising Thunder, coming to PC in the future, has decided to do away with that kind of motion.  But looking at the video, you wouldn't know that.

He's not even the only one. Another genre veteran David Sirlin also announced he was thinking of making a fighter with lessened controls called Fantasy Strike.

And we haven't even discussed the 3 isms you have to choose before each match.

You see, the thing is, I have a confession: I put a lot of old emulated games to my 5 year old nephew. He's basically accessing a lot of the games I would have been able to play at his age, had I not been poor as fuck and ignorant of all game store's locations.

And he WANTS to play fighting games, especially, you know, the ones with colorful graphics and known characters. And unlike ME at  his age, he has me to know at least SOME of the special moves. And teaching him has been, erm... a bit of a bitch. "No, down, down forward, forward and punch! Either of these 3 is punch!"

Have fun learning about this many moves for about 56 characters, kiddo!

But he loves em' anyway. I got him Mugen, filled the roster with whatever beta as fuck characters I could find, and made him a bit of a Bootleg MVC2. He can't tear himself away from it...but he also gets beaten up by everybody, gets bored and leaves. It seems to me he could eventually really get into them, but for a bit there, he didn't even WANT to play no fighting games. He had them on the black list: No Sports, no racing, no puzzles NO FIGHTING GAMES.

You see, Cappy, SOME people think these characters are worthy of being in a fighting game.

In a time where mobile games are proving that even the simplest, proto Atari-but-with-Snes-Graphics games can find an audience, why is is it such heresy to say "no, this doesn't have to be this way?" Killian basically echoed my very sentiments. Which means either he's a man after my own heart or he fuckign read my blog and stole my idea.Either way, I'm off to lawyer up !

Why "Free the Nipple" must be stopped at 9:22 AM

Song's pretty good, too.

The perceptions, they are ah-changing. I grew up in a time where drugs where DRUGS, and legalizing them in any shape or form was out of the question. And now look at this shit.  Everyone's starting to go "well, shit, that didn't work. Let's try something else."


I applaud this "try something else" approach. I might not always agree with the something elses, but I do appreciate the idea of seeing the way we approach we where taking and going "let's just think about it for a bit."

And I also like women's breasts. So you might be surprised to know Batzarro is 100 percent for serious against the "Free the Nipple" movement,  a movement seeking to de-sexualize and legalize female toplessness. Here's my totally non faceticious reasons.

Yes, the tit showing was the troubling aspect of this.

1) It would make us look stupid for spending so many years making a fuss about it.

Back in the mid 80's to mid 90's, the local tv channels apparently didn't need no Free The Nipple Movement, because they would just run American movies(and occasionally, Brazilian soaps) with nudity. For me, growing up, that was normal. When cops walk through a titty bar looking for a suspect, sometimes you'd see some boobage over there. Nothing to it.

Then in 1997 we got Cable TV.  The image was super clear and they would run cool movies every 2 days instead of every 6 months. But it stood out to me that there where no breasts. Even in moments where you knew there where supposed to be breasts, there was in their place,  black bars, mosaic effects, and other silly things. All the actual breasts where on the scrambled channel, occasionally  making themselves visible whenever only my brother was present.

Well, what happens, kids, is that there is an agency overseeing broadcasted images called the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC decides, among other things, what you can say on the radio, what you can show on TV, and how much you can fake-compete in the telecommunications business.
The FCC could, and actually did charge you 1000's of dollars for showing a nipple on the screen. This was...this is the way it is. We've deemed female nipples damaging enough to the youth psyche that we punish those who show them with hefty fines.

One day, on a widely seen football event, what was probably an accident revealed a single areola on beloved singstress Janet Jackson. After that, we decided we needed to show all live shows with a 5 second delay, just to make sure that a nipple never, ever accidentally sneaks its way into our children's eyes.

And isn't that super fuckin' stupid? YES IT IS. Who is stupid? We are stupid. Let's not even get  on to the MPAA's treatment of female nudity, and the ESRB's treatment of it.

But suddenly this group comes and declares female toplessness to be a fairly undamaging event, that no one need to worry about. Slowly but surely everyone starts seeing reason, and before you know it a bunch of states become reasonable about it.

But then, it creates a disparity. You can totally walk into Gamestop shirtless to buy games, but those games are still self-regulated to minimize nudity and sexual situations that could upset upsetable types. You're just making all the time we spent putting black bars and reducing nudity super pointless. You're shining a light on decades of our society and saying "you're being ridiculous" and being RIGHT about it. STOP IT!

So many have died!

2) It would make the Mary Sues and Stylites of the world very...confused

Sites like Mary Sue are run by prudes that don't even know they're prudes. They talk a big game about the representation of women in pop culture being important, and doing so and so being offensive and troubling, but the truth is they're deeply uncomfortable with most types of sexuality. Since they can't express anything negative about homosexuality, to make up for that they just turn around and start cutting the crust out of anything regarding straight people, to I guess try to get it to a point where no woman could possibly open  a comic book and see an image that disagrees with what they like. Or, like, look at a variant cover that's merely one of the existing options for a cover.

And so one day,for progressiveness, of all things, we "loosen up" about fem nips. I bet that the Mary Sues of the world would, at that point, be elated, because this is for progressiveness. They'd love it until the shower scenes start showing up.

You know what I mean.  If you think everyone's just gonna treat the newly freed bare breasts strictly under "Mary Sues Guidelines and Expectations Regarding Bared Female Anatomy Ideals" you're shit out of luck.  Before you know it, you'll be seeing "artistic" renderings of Supergirl and Wonder Woman's bare breasts.  Sure, Supergirl's a  minor(or hundreds of years old? Or not-even-human?), but bare breasts are not sexual anymore, so who are you gonna complain to? THE MAYOR?

So what's a site of progressive prudes to do? They want things to be liberalized, but they won't like what people do once they are freed. But it's just as well, since...

"Yaaawn"

3)It might just be the death of Pop Culture.
You know what Hollywood is scared of? You. For nearly a century, they had a tight grip on who makes what, and how he makes it, when it comes to movies in America. They knew exactly how many studios where too many, and how to deal with those who won't work within their system. They controled the theaters, they controlled retail, and they controlled movies themselves. You either worked with them, or your movie would not get any wide distribution, be shown in any amount of important theaters, and would basically be a failure.

But...then the internet came along, with the strength to carry on. And slowly but surely it's put the promotion and distribution and creation of entertainment  ever more out of the hands of Hollywood.
As I mentioned before, FTN's goals would probably create an (even wider) gap between real life and the entertainment industry's standards.

But the Internet would not have the wait. I'm pretty sure a new exploitation genre would dawn upon nipples being freed, and all on the Youtube, which already has a monetization  system. I'm pretty sure if there was a free knock off Avengers Age of Ultron, where fake Ultrons where all topless women...I'd watch THAT one at least 5 times!

Hollywood has used "the fear of nudity" to exert control over movies for so long, I think they'd die if they couldn't, and had to actually compete toe to toe with unhindered productions while they pitifully try to decide if "that is PG 13".

Gotta save somethin' for the ladies, after all.

4) You're ruining the classics!
One thing's for sure: Nudity is totally ok when known artists from the 15th century do it. We take old, classic art with the presumption that nobody back then was just a horndog  who just wanted to see sexy naked ladies. And it's old, so you know it's edifying. Not like CURRENT art, where you're supposed to take in with the STUPID context of STUPID, current society. Bleh.

So basically, nudity was a niche that we allowed "old classics" to carve for themselves, while coming down on current works for being "exploitative" of nudity. Nudity is the only thing a lot of these old art things have going for it, and basically if they do it it's for real art, and if Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen does it, it's because it's written with a 14 year old's understanding of the world.

But what happens when ANY art can have nudity on it, and thrive?  What happens when a music video allows itself to have nudity and still run with the VEVO crowd? I'll tell you what happens: we don't have any real reason to assume  hundreds of year old paintings doing nudity are "for the art".
You don't want the old painters to be seen for what they really are, right? Openly exploiting the attractiveness the female body has towards  male audiences? You know I'm right.

5) How are we supposed to know which sites are porn and which aren't?

In our current society, there's two kinds of sites: those that show the titties, and those that don't.
Youtube, for example, won't show the titties, officially. Sure, you can find them if you look hard enough, but on the whole, there's no titties. Just like there's no copyrighted content.

Youporn, whoever, does show the titties. For most intents and purposes, Youporn is like a youtube where you can download the videos. And all the videos are porn, I guess.

As you can tell, we can easilly tell which site is a pornographic site  and which is just a site where occasionally pornography occurs. You can't go to Youporn and mistake it for anything else. You will see banners filled with tits, and fellatio and ridiculously huge dicks. It's a pretty clear line.

Once you say "nipples are okay", though, the line gets all blurry. Youtube won't be able to just say "this one has tits on it, it's a no-go". They'll have to see the whole thing and decide, video per video, if what is being shown is pornography, and just "art". And you know they'd rather make an automatized nipple detection function and just get it over with.

What if it's two asian coeds making out with no shirt? There's lots of "making out" videos on youtube, such as this:

What if you do the same thing, but with no shirt? Is making out with no shirt more sexual? It SHOULDN'T BE, because bare breasts are not sexual as per the premise. When does it become porn? If they touch them?  If they suck them? Penetration? Stupid sax music?

What if it's a video of a grown person drinking the woman's breast milk? Is it porn automatically? When isn't it? It's something that happens. That's how The Grapes of Wrath ended! But what if my version of The Grapes of Wrath switched out the characters for sexy asians?

We're pretty sure we don't want 5 year olds to find out about motorboating through some recommended thumbnail on the Barney video his mother put him  on. This would force us to examine our perception of what pornography actually is, and how it affects our children. So why not just leave it as it is, brah. Don't rock the teta boat! Don't...

...Actually, I'm in favor of all those things, and even the actual reasons behind FTN. Go get them!

Space Jam 2 is a no win situation at 5:59 AM

Okay, Bugs, refference Monica Lewinsky while you, Lola drive a Miata into MC Hammer's repossesed home. I'll listen to some Natalie Umbruglia and you Michael, you...you're fine.

I always stand to say that adapting something that's not good is no excuse for your version to not be good. While the veritable infestation of  sequels, remake, prequels and adaptations is nothing short of Hollywood just not being willing to take a risk, that doesn't excuse poor output. If the material is intellectually lightweight or down right godawful, that only gives room for those with skill and love of the craft to swim against the tide and provide us something worthy.

An adaptation of Starship Troopers basically running the premise of the book backwards is always going to be an easier order than a shot by shot remake of Psycho.
With that said, Space Jam 2. It's talked about, it's rumored, Lebron James is rumored to star in it.  Now the real question is, can you really ruin Space Jam?

Maybe he's gonna play the villain here?

You see, Space Jam is a pretty unique thing, and I don't mean that as praise. We get cynical now when they annonce an Asteroids or Emoji movie, things that get suggested and announced but for whatever cause reason prevails and it never happen, but Space Jam is the adaptation of a  Shoe commercial, tying in the life of then world's greatest Basketball star Michael Jordan.  And apparently nobody groaned enough, because it not only existed, but it made some money.

So in a world where rehashing is the safe route to money and nostalgia runs rampant, it's a no brainer to remake something that is both fondly remembered and made money. But here's the thing, it's not as safe as it seems.

You see, when Space Jam came to be, things where different. Michael Jordan was a household name, and summer movies where not  all CGI action adaptations of  comics and Cartoons. Space Jam 2 won't be competing with The Mirror has Two Faces and The English Patient or whatever. It'll be competing with a Yet another Batman movie  and another Marvel movie. Does this really have enough nostalgia fuel to battle that?


But what about the story? What about it? Look, even if you look upon the movie fondly,  do me a favor, and tell me what elements of "Basketball Star goes  to play Basketball with 1940's cartoon characters against  evil aliens" bear repeating.  Do you really want to see what the writers had to come up to get Lebron James playing B-Ball against Witch Hazel?

Do they retread on the first movie and have Space Jerk Danny Devito send even more goons to try to out-hoop the Toons? Do they make a new set of circumstances that would get a Basketball Celebrity into a court with them?

We want more?

Basically this has a pretty good chance of being just as bad as Looney Toons Back in Action, with the added crap bonus that some people actually expect this to be good on account of nostalgia. All you'd have to do to make a better movie than Space Jam is make something not so...Space Jammy. There is no formula to replicate, there is no actual THING to be brought back from the movie, unless you can somehow bring  Michael Jordan and Bill Murray and it's all winding up to be dissapointment.

And the thing is, we don't have the right to be dissapointed by Space Jam 2. Unlike the first Jam, we'll all be aware of who's directing it, writting it cameoing in it and how dissapointing it is before the thing hits the ground. You can't hide behind our love for Sports Stars or Cartoons anymore, Space Jam.
But still, I look forward to all our dissections of this illfated attempt.

Bound to be more fun than the film itself.

Charlse Barkley's Shut Up and Act.

Easter Egg-Man at 4:52 AM

Add caption