Probably most of you are aware that the World of Warcraft expansion The Burning Crusade came out at midnight two nights ago. It raises the maximum possible level from 60 to 70. The first character to max out the new level cap hit it this morning at 4:04 AM. Dude is Gawell, a gnome mage, who is played by a 24-year-old French guy. There’s …
I’m in the middle of Susanna “No H in My Name” Clarke’s The Ladies of Grace Adieu, which is pummeling me relentlessly with its greatness. Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is one of the best fantasy novels I’ve read in years, though her publisher savvily packaged it like straight literary fiction, so non-nerds won’t feel the shame …
I can’t quite get my mind around the fact that J.J. Abrams now basically owns the entire Star Trek franchise. After the success of Alias Paramount handed him the whole thing, like a Hummer or a couple extra points on the back end. Star Trek is a living, breathing cultural entity. You can’t just give it to somebody.
Except you can and …
I was going to blog about Harrison Ford turning down a Han Solo spinoff, but the story feels off to me — the sourcing’s not so good. I don’t buy it. Let’s all be quiet and maybe he’ll make Indy 4.
So instead…here’s Robert Downey, Jr! Every year Time does a piece about great performances from the past year. Because we’re geniuses …
There’s been a lot of hype lately about the rising tide of you-culture and user generated content. Much of which I wrote with my own 8 fingers.
So what with the iPhone coming out and all, it’s interesting to look at Apple in that context. Because it’s the least you-culture company I know of. They do no market research on new …
So James Cameron is making Avatar. Or sorry, Avatar — IMDB isn’t that helpful.
I don’t totally trust Cameron. Yeah, he’s made some geek classics — in fact the streak comprising Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, and then T2, all in a row, 1984-1991, is probably one of the all-time great feats of nerd cinema. (I was going to attempt some …
I don’t really get the new vogue on the part of studio execs for publicly calling-out the talent. Maybe they’re tired and cranky from counting all their money. But last summer Sumner Redstone got all up in Tom Cruise’s grill, and now some guy from New Line is all, like, no way is Peter Jackson making The Hobbit here. I don’t pretend to …
Or oh, snap, it’s just Apple now. They dropped the “Computer” part. Does Sir Paul have to sue them all over again now?
One reason posting has been a little light lately is that I’ve been in Cupertino for the past week working on a behind-the-scenes piece about the iPhone launch. It’s here. So I have physically touched an iPhone, and it …
I’m writing this on a train heading north from Silicon Valley to San Francisco for MacWorld. Doing a little amateur war-driving on the way. Distinct lack of creativity hereabouts vis-a-vis naming WiFi networks — “linksys” and “NETGEAR” and “default” all the way. Somebody should get right on that.
Great piece here about the decline of …
(Continuing Nerd World’s look at the year ahead in nerd cinema…)
May 4th. Spider-Man 3. By and large I believe that Sam Raimi is not the enemy. He’s got lifetime nerd cred from the whole Evil Dead thing, and there are some remarkably good things in the Spidey movies. And nice to see James “Flyboys” Franco still working. (Also, judging …
Last year just wasn’t a very nerd-friendly year at the box office. Like scavengers, we took our pleasures where we found them, and they were scarce–X3, Superman Returns, Scanner Darkly. I thought after the success of Lord of the Rings nerds would be aggressively pandered to, the way Hollywood pandered to 13-year-old girls after Titanic. …
Today I woke up and thought to myself, holy dammit, I’m going to stand the blogging world on its head with a post that reinvents, nay, transcends the very blogging medium itself. Or I could just complain about Gears of War. I flipped a coin, and waddayaknow?
But seriously, I don’t quite have the sloppy make-outs for this game the way a …
