Ever wonder what the attraction to Lobo as a character was? Aside from being an amalgam of various comic tropes and stereotypes, something about him ended up resonating to the point that thirty years since his inception, the anti-hero (who is pretty much just such a badass villain that people still like him) finds his way to the roster of Injustice: Gods Among Us as the first of four DLC characters.

For those who purchased the Season Pass, Lobo was announced on launch day for the game as the first member of the DLC roster. From the video below, he looks like a combination of fighting styles of some of the other brute characters like Solomon Grundy or Doomsday with the gunplay of Deathstroke. The trailer also gives a brief history of Lobo and the concept behind him, and how Lobo started out almost as a parody before taking on a life of his own.

Continue Reading →

After the long wait since first seeing glimpses at San Diego Comic-Con last Summer, Injustice: Gods Among Us arrived last week. After all the hype behind it with its roster of heroes and villains facing off against each other in a Mortal Kombat style fighting engine, “What could go wrong?” we pondered. Famous last words right? Well, luckily the team behind Injustice: Gods Among Us at NetherRealm Studios pulled through and gave the best DC fighting experience to date that could possibly rival that of the Marvel vs. Capcom series.

The Long

On the surface, there is a huge appeal to seeing who could win in a fight between Batman and Superman. Comic fans won’t deny that but to create a successful fighter, NetherRealm couldn’t play by traditional comic book rules. While Superman and Batman may be on a level playing field in a comic setting where brain matters as much as brawn, no one is ever going to believe that the Green Arrow can beat up Superman or Doomsday… like ever (sorry Arrow fans). So while the appeal of the game is the premise, it is the nuts and bolts under the hood of Injustice: Gods Among Us that make it a solid fighter.

Continue Reading →

Going into The Host I didn’t know what to expect. The trailer looked promising and I had heard that Twilight author Stephenie Meyer’s adult book was better than her vampire romance novels. I cannot judge the book, having never read it, but The Host movie was unspectacular and downright weird.

The plot goes like this: Aliens called “Souls” have invaded Earth and taken over nearly every human being (think Invasion of the Body Snatchers). Melanie Stryder (Saoirse Ronan) is captured and a Soul called Wanderer is implanted into her body. Instead of fading away, Melanie’s consciousness holds on and the two fight for control of Melanie’s body.

Eventually Wanderer (now Wanda) helps get Melanie to her loved ones but things get (more) complicated when Wanda starts to have feelings for new guy Ian (Jake Abel) but Melanie is still in love with her boyfriend Jared (Max Irons). In the mean time, main antagonist, the Seeker (an awesomely stone faced/borderline psychotic Diane Kruger) is hunting for the last humans and using Melanie/Wanda to find them.

Continue Reading →

Fans of Korean cinema had very high hopes for Stoker, Park Chan-Wook’s English language debut. Thanks to his reputation on the international film festival circuit, in particular with his cult Vengeance Trilogy (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance), Park had seeming first choice of talent and assembled a stellar cast in Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode and Nicole Kidman. (Interestingly, none of the three principals is an American.)

True to form for Park, Stoker is both visually stunning and psychologically and physically brutal. The cinematography is painterly and the framing sculptural. Every frame merits notice and every still a work of art. In fact it’s safe to say that Stoker is Park’s most strictly art-produced film. Every color and detail bears evidence of obsessive attention, from the color of characters’ hair to the color of the walls, from the stitching on a collar to the scuffing on a shoe.

In large part this magnification of detail effectively reflects the psychological and somatic experience of India Stoker (Wasikowska), whose hypersensitive observations of the world make ordinary life an ordeal for her. On the day India turns eighteen her father Richard dies in a horrific accident. We see her first at his funeral. Relations between her parents have evidently been strained for some time. Her mother, Evelyn Stoker, seems hardly bereaved, nor does she attempt to comfort her shattered daughter.

Continue Reading →

In under two months, more than 427 million hours have been logged into Call of Duty: Black Ops II multiplayer and zombie modes. At this point, it is reasonable for players to be clamoring for some new content. Treyarch has responded with a resounding, “It’s coming!” with the the Revolution DLC pack (which had some tidbits leaked late last week). The Revloution DLC pack will be coming out first to XBox 360 on January 29.

The Revolution DLC pack will include four new multiplayer maps, a new zombie map, the first new zombie DLC mode and the first ever DLC weapon. Check out the level descriptions below as well as the full preview trailer after the jump.

Continue Reading →

Epic franchises have been doing crossovers for years. It was only a matter of time before the team behind The Lord of the Rings movie franchise took notice of the success of other film blockbusters like Star Wars, Harry Potter and Indiana Jones and how well they all did when they met the LEGO world. Not only did the toys sell, but their video games were all certified hits. LEGO The Lord of the Rings promised to again do something never before done in a LEGO crossover.

The Long

Unlike LEGO Batman and its sequel which were original stories, LEGO The Lord of the Rings took the path of Star Wars and put the entire film trilogy and its most epic encounters into LEGO form. Unlike Star Wars though, LEGO The Lord of the Rings included actual voiceover taken directly from the film. That means the most iconic scenes, though given LEGO twists and humor in many cases, have the authentic audio from the movies. Hearing LEGO Gandalf utter, “You shall not pass” to the Balrog is unexpectedly still incredibly powerful even though, for all intensive purposes, it’s a toy saying it.

Continue Reading →

It’s always interesting to see how people react to art books. Some people can’t wait to get their hands on them as they anxiously await a game’s release while others like to look at them after the fact so the vistas and characters aren’t spoiled for them. I received The Art of Assassin’s Creed III almost on the same day that the review copy of the game came to me and I opted for the latter and saved the artwork until after I had experienced Assassin’s Creed III’s gameplay. After going through almost 30 hours in this lush world, it made me appreciate the concept work that went into making it come to life even more.

The Art of Assassin’s Creed III starts off with what one wouldn’t expect, the modern world. Since the interludes of Assassin’s Creed III take place in the modern era with Desmond at the helm, there is a quick exploration of the temple of the First Civilization that Desmond and his team make their base as well as the areas they must venture to recover the keys to power the temple. After that, everything heads back to the American Revolution.

Continue Reading →

Figures it would take David O. Russell to come up with one of my favorite rom-coms of 2012. I’m not ashamed to admit that rom-coms are maybe my favorite movie genre, even though the genre is, as a rule, a pitiful one. Good rom-coms come along once in a blue moon and the bad ones are not only plentiful but painful. In fact, the last really good one I remember is last year’s Bridesmaids, which wasn’t even technically a rom-com, but did have as one of its many virtues a very believable and sweet love story between the Kristen Wiig character and the nice Irish cop.

Russell’s genre is family wackadoodle, which (with the notable of Three Kings) he’s explored in every major film project he’s written/directed: Spanking the Monkey, Flirting with Disaster, I Heart Huckabees, and now the new Silver Linings Playbook. The wacky family in Playbook are the Solitanos of Philadelphia: Pat, Sr. (Robert De Niro), an extremely superstitious and OCD Philadelphia Eagles fan who’s been barred from Eagles stadium for life for brawling with supporters of opposing teams.

Continue Reading →

It’ll be interesting to see how audiences who haven’t read Life of Pi, Yann Martel’s 2001 novel respond to director Ang Lee’s vision of the colorful tale. Piscine Molitor “Pi” Patel is a twice-strangely-monikered, religiously insatiable 16-year-old Indian boy immigrating by freighter from Pondicherry to Canada with his parents, brother and the animal inhabitants of their family zoo who finds himself the sole human survivor of a shipwreck at sea.

The book is a rare hybrid: gripping survival thriller crossed with metaphysics and theology. That hybrid paid off in spades: it was both a runaway best-selling and massive award winner, starting with the Man Booker Prize in the UK. The story is bold and fantastical, yet as I remember it also dwelled for long, engaging stretches on the tedium and loneliness of sole survival at sea, with the world narrowed to Pi’s all-consuming counting of the cans of potable water and the packets of sea biscuits.

Continue Reading →

The Call of Duty series is the gaming industry’s equivelent of a Michael Bay summer blockbuster film. While the story might be slightly convoluted, millions of people flock to it and spend their hard earned money on a explosion filled, high octane, testosterone laced good time. In addition to the campaign, Call of Duty: Black Ops II includes both the standard mutliplayer and the Zombie mode from Treyarch which has given the studio something for people to remember them by.

It’s no surprise that Black Ops II had huge midnight launches at over a thousand locations across the country but lines of people don’t necessarily ensure a game will live up to the hype. But, Treyarch continues to prove why they are trusted with such a franchise.

The Long

First and foremost, regardless of anything else in the game, Call of Duty: Black Ops II captures shooter gameplay and control on a console at its finest. Everything from movement to aiming and shooting to damage detection all feel perfect in Black Ops II. The default control scheme is perfect for the genre and everything really just fits perfectly into place (at least on the XBox 360 controller) for the FPS experience. If you stripped down the graphics and setting, the engine behind Call of Duty: Black Ops II would still be an ideal shooter.

Continue Reading →

It’s been five years since Master Chief finished the fight and saved the earth in the events of Halo 3. Since, there have been an expansion turned spin-off, RTS, prequel and an HD remake of the original, but no proper sequel. As hyped as Black Ops II may be, no game’s fanbase may be clamoring more for a sequel than those of the XBox 360 exclusive Halo 4.

This is the first new proper Halo title made by 343 Industries and the start of a new trilogy for Master Chief called the Reclaimer trilogy. With the lofty task put on this new studio, the results so far have been amazing.

The Long

The biggest fear of Halo 4 was if the game was actually going to still feel like Halo. After all, it has been five years and a new studio working on the game. At the same time, the first person shooter genre has evolved by leaps and bounds since Halo broke open the floodgates of FPS shooting to consoles. Luckily, 343 Industries was able to take both into effect and comes up with a compromise that feels modern while not just trying to be another Call of Duty clone.

Halo 4 retains most of Halo’s signature control elements. Zooming in with a weapon comes from pressing down on the right stick. Melee comes from the right bumper. And the grenade toss happens from the left trigger. If you haven’t played a Halo since Reach, it will only take a few minutes to reacclimate yourself with the controls. There is a reason they have worked so well for the series in the past and continue to hold true to this version of the game as well.

Continue Reading →

At numerous points in the watching of Lincoln, Steven Spielburg’s new ode to America and Americana, I was reminded of Tableau Vivant, a kind of staged group charades that was a popular entertainment of the 19th century. In Tableau Vivant, costumed enactors wordlessly enact a story, freezing in a series of familiar scenes or attitudes.

And so is the same in Lincoln, in which actors, led by an astonishingly physically like Daniel Day Lewis, enact the last several months of Abraham Lincoln’s life, frequently freezing in scenes or postures that seem designed to recall all the many paintings, daguerrotypes, statuary and coinage with which we are all so familiar and that pay homage to the man whom most agree is our country’s greatest president.

Despite the dramatic build-up around the central accomplishment of Lincoln’s severely truncated second term—the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery—and the political sausage-making this necessitates, the film feels less story than hagiography. Spielberg seems determined to convince us that Lincoln was a great president, and I buy it, but was it ever in question? Is this biopic or is it a nearly 3-hour Franklin Mint commercial? There’s been a lot of press about Lewis’s voice in this movie, but to me his entire performance, voice included, is problematic.

Continue Reading →

After three straight games following Ezio through the Renaissance, the Assassin’s Creed series moves on to a new and still somewhat unexpected timeframe of the American Revolution. Since the initial announcement of Assassin’s Creed III, the hype machine has turned out video preview after video preview to help bring back loyal assassins as well as recruit new ones to the franchise’s ranks. The result is one of the most anticipated titles of 2012 (coming out right before Halo 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops II) which will most likely outsell its previous versions. But as we have seen in the past, just because a game has a triple A development budget and tons of marketing behind it, that doesn’t necessarily ensure it is going to live up to its potential.

The Long…

When I first stepped into Assassin’s Creed III, the first thing I noticed was how alive the world in front of me was. Being in a theater with hundreds of other guests made it feel like a real event going on around my character. It didn’t feel like just some instance created with a few background characters to fill up the space nor did it feel like the background of a sports game with a generic crowd with repetitive motions wallpapered in either. Instead it felt like my character was a part of a real and tactile world.

This feeling continues to hold true in many other areas of the game, especially the cities of Boston and New York. Constantly, you are surrounded by people all doing very different things. Some might be selling wares, others begging for coins and others just going about their daily business. What helps make this different though is the variety of animations and poses characters on screen go through as they go about their daily life. With a few exceptions (like the subway arrival in one of the game’s later present day scenes), you don’t often see two people on screen doing the same thing at the same time.

Continue Reading →

Based on the life and autobiographical writings of Mark O’Brien, a California journalist and poet who sought the full range of human experience despite being mostly confined to an iron lung, The Sessions tells its remarkable story with humor, frankness, little fanfare and no sanctimony.

Born in 1950, O’Brien was paralyzed by polio at age six and thereafter unable to breathe on his own. However, at times in his life he was strong enough to survive for several hours at a time outside the iron lung by means of a portable respirator. With the aid of this device, he enrolled at age 28 at UC Berkeley, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s in journalism, traveling around campus on an electric gurney that he controlled with a stick held in his mouth.

He began contributing articles on his quest for independent living as a disabled person to periodicals, and writing poetry. (Before his death in 1999 he participated in a documentary, Breathing Lessons, by Jessica Yu, that won the Oscar for Documentary Short Subject in 1996.)

Continue Reading →

The James Bond franchise celebrates its 50th anniversary in spectacular style with Skyfall, the 23rd film in the series and Daniel Craig’s third outing as 007. Skyfall takes every hallmark of the series and pushes them farther than ever. It’s all there—exotic locations, incredible action sequences, a fascinating arch villain, gorgeous women, the best new Bond song (by Adele) since Shirley Bassey’s “Diamonds Are Forever,” some interesting personnel surprises (my advice: don’t read the spoiler reviews!), and of course, the car.

The locations (Turkey, Shanghai, Macau) are especially stunning, thanks to director Sam Mendes’ (and the Coen Brothers’) go-to man, Roger Deakins, whose painterly, watchful cinematography continually captures moments of beauty and stillness in the midst of danger and frenetic action. As for the villain, you can easily learn the actor who plays him, but as I think in this case it’s much better to be surprised, I will only say that he is as terrifying and charismatic and sad as Hannibal Lecter.

Naomie Harris gives almost as good as she gets as Bond’s field associate. And Bérénice Lim Marlohe’s Sévérine is as gorgeous and tragic as a Bond woman has been, with a sadly all-too-relevant real-world backstory.

Continue Reading →