Commander In Chief

*sigh*

Look, its a good concept. Female independent VP takes over the presidency, having to keep the family together while also trying to prevent the presidency from falling apart around her. Strong female role model and all.

But...

I don't know. I feel like they're pumping up the "OMG ITS A WOMAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE" aspect too much. The Speaker of the House is a charismatic, well spoken, clever ass who doesn't seem to have a single good bone in his body. I know, he'll probably make a grand reversal at episode 12 or so, and allow the VP and cabinet nominations to go through. The democrats are conspicuously absent, despite being the majority in the Senate, the more powerful part of the government.

Also, there are some weird things about the show. For example:

The SOB speaker of the house keeps saying how there's no way any of the president's nominations will get confirmed, but that doesn't really matter, because HE DOESN'T HAVE A SAY IN IT! Nominations are confirmed only by the Senate. Evil old white guy doesn't even get a vote. And, since the senate is democratic controlled, the prez won't even have to look in the republican's direction, save to avoid a fillibuster!

Things always work out for her. In a job as important as hers, things never work out that well. She follows the philosophy of "When faced with two options, pick the third", but without the messy screwups that it sometimes creates.

She always seems to have a pound of makeup on. It might just be me...

We never hear about comments outside of the white house or capitol hill.

If this speaker is such a dick, then why does everyone keep bowing down to him? We've got Tom Delay in that spot in real life, and every democrat thinks that Delay is an asshole, and probably a few republicans, too.

This is not a good show about the Commander in Chief. Want a good one, look up West Wing, which is turning rather surreal with the presidentai campaign looking a lot like the 2004 one, excluding the fact that the nominees are a senator from California and a Representative from Texas.

Oh, and in case you don't know, the Republican is the guy from CA, and the Texan's a Democrat...

Weird. But still better than a show that claims to be revolutionary but doesn't do anything new, other than a gender and party change.

Doom...

Okay, the film comes out on Friday, and I want to see it.

On DVD, most likely. If it gets good reviews I may try to go with some RPG club people in theaters.

There's three things about the movie that I'm really excited about.

1: The Big Fucking Gun. I don't like swearing, but the gun is... the BIG FUCKING GUN! Also known as the Bio Force Gun, its the giant weapon that blows shit up goooooood. I just want to see it and the characters reaction to it.

Oh, and apparantly, after shooting, The Rock aka Dwayne Johnson got to keep the prop of the BFG. Awesome :).

2: The Chainsaw. This is the part of the commercials where I come damn close to squealing. You've got the weird demon dog thing in front of you, and you've got the chainsaw. The most awesome weapon in the history of gaming. It's a... chainsaw!

3: The First Person sequence. Now, this is the part of the film that will get the most attention from critics. For those who don't know, there is something of a 5 minute sequence of the film shot entirely from a first person perspective. Obviously there are some ingenoius cuts here and there to preserve the flow of things without forcing a 5 minute continuous shot, but it's at least going to look like the First Person Shooter of which its based.

The big thing, though, is that this is something unique in a movie that, frankly, I expected to be a cheesy movie feeding off the popularity of the game. And, well, it probably will be. But they're trying something new, something that hasn't exactly been done well before, and they're doing this in a movie that seems anything but high concept.

It will be interesting, at the very least, and stands a good chance at knocking Mortal Kombat off the throne of "Best Video Game based Movie".

Which won't be very hard.

*cough*

I hereby support America's National Institute on Media and the Family...

Jack Thompson is blasted by pro-family group (article is linked by Penny Arcade, and will soon be linked by Slashdot, so load times may vary)

The key quote from the article:

"(Jack Thompson's) commentary has included extreme hyperbole and (his) tactics have included personally attacking individuals for whom I have a great deal of respect... Some of the people that you have publicly criticised are not only people of integrity, but are people who have worked to improve the lives of children."

Yowza.

America's National Institute on Media and the Family has a website, of course, at http://www.mediafamily.org/, which does movie and game reviews, taking into account the quality of the game/film, as well as the age appropriateness of it. Games like Unreal Championship can get a lot of props for the qualiity of the game, but still get low scores for the adult content, while games like Pirates get much better scores. The games are also regarded as good or bad for age ranges. Its a pretty good site for parents who want to know more than what's in the ESRB content discriptions.

Props on them for getting away from the walking, talking bad press machine.