We have a little tradition on The Lowdown Blog. Every Christmas we show a Christmas movie on the blog. Everyone has the day off so we’re going to relax too.
One of the great debates at Christmas is how bad A Christmas Story is. It’s not helped by the 24-hour marathons on TBS. But we’re not going to show A Christmas Story today. We’ve got something worse. It’s time for the Star Wars Holiday Special. As bad as A Christmas Story is, it’s shown on TV every year. The Star Wars Holiday Special isn’t.
Sometimes being a game reviewer is a thankless job. Right now I’m playing an indie game that I was actually looking forward to and finding out all sorts of issues like controls and AI lunacy that make the game’s boss fights border on the impossible.
Anyway, twas the morn before Christmas and all through the blog,
Steve was setting up a rhyme that was a proper log.
That was a shit joke because that my attempts at poetry often end very, very badly. So let’s just skip my bad attempts at utilizing the English language. It’s time for the links. Here’s Nina Agdal.
Bad news! New Canadian digital piracy laws come into effect on January 2nd. Get your downloading done now. Then get that anonymous torrent downloading thing. Tribler? Something like that. (Vice)
After eight days of deliberations, the jury in the Luka Magnotta trial found him guilty of the first-degree murder of Jun Lin. (CBC News)
Sam Biddle, who discovered the original infamous tweet, details his first face-to-face meeting with Justine Sacco, the woman who rose to Twitter infamy when tweeting an AIDS “joke” before getting on a flight. (Gawker)
Every so often, we take a look at the most epic fails from the week that was. Since Christmas is in a couple of days, I thought that it would be appropriate to drop the usual fails and go with a special Christmas Fails of the Week. This week, we have five pictures and videos that we think are the most epic Christmas fails of the week.
While this year was a quiet one for Worst of Music posts on the blog (the only one was Avril Lavigne’s Hello Kitty), that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a whole pile of bad music this year.
Since most of the internet has gone into year-in-review mode, I thought that we’d do our usual retrospective of the worst music of 2014. But why do I have to do anything when I can use DJ Earworm’s annual mashup of 25 of the top pop hits of the year to recap the year in bad music.
I know that malls and such are open for the next three days but this is the last real chance that most people will get to go shopping for Christmas presents. I lucked out because I only had four or so shops to run to yesterday so my day wasn’t too bad. Funnily enough, there were more people at the liquor store yesterday than at the mall. I can understand. I need booze to deal with my relatives too.
So a couple of hours late, it’s time for the Sunday links. To kick things off, here’s Canadian model Alyssa Barbara. You know, I’m thinking of bringing back the old Hottest Canadian bracket in 2015. I think she’d fit right into the top 32.
We’re nearly two years from the start of another Presidential campaign and already we’re having fact checking issues at big publications. The NYT, for example, already attempted a derail of the Clinton campaign with a poorly fact-checked story. (Media Matters)
Jeb Bush is thinking about making a run for the White House. After Bush 43, would America even consider a Bush 45? (Vice)
Great news! Science says that moderate alcohol consumption helps boost your immune system. (Mother Jones)
If ever there was a marriage of licensed property and game developer that made sense, it’s Telltale Games and Game of Thrones. With The Walking Dead series, Telltale showed that it could do series with dark themes, tough decisions and no-win scenarios. After some previous lacklustre GoT games, George R. R. Martin gave the okay for Telltale to have a go and assigned his personal assistant as a story consultant so you know this isn’t going to be a quick cash-in on the license.
Game of Thrones is the fourth series we’ve seen from Telltale this year and concerns about the possibility of the team being spread thin are unfounded. Episode One of GoT could be the best debut episode that Telltale has ever done and fits in perfectly with the rest of the world of Westeros.
Some people love it. Some people hate it. Say about it what you will but Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom certainly got strong reaction from anyone who watched it. The worst thing in entertainment is for people to not react at all to something. Even if the critics (who were the last group the show was targeted to) hated it, they fell for it hook, line and sinker.
Anyway, with the show over, I thought we’d cash in one last time on The Newsroom with a second Man Lab Showdown for December. In one corner is the show’s female lead, Emily Mortimer. In the other is the actress of show’s most improved female character over the course of three seasons, Alison Pill.
More pictures and the poll after the jump.
A six-movie saga that has spanned thirteen years in cinemas and 77 years since The Hobbit was first published is coming to an end this weekend. Yesterday was the North American release date for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, the last movie in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit dual trilogy.
To celebrate the premiere of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, we have not only a handy infographic with a look at the titular five armies but also an interactive flash graphic with the armies and a map.
By the way, SPOILERS! So many spoilers! Well, I suppose it’s a spoiler if you haven’t read the book.
The way this week has gone, I think that we could use a little break. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten to Tuesday and felt like I desperately need the weekend to come already. From a look at the news this week, I’d imagine a number of other people feel the same way.
Anyway, it’s time for the links. I don’t know when Community is back but that doesn’t mean that we can’t feature Gillian Jacobs.
While Sydney was gripped with a hostage crisis, the people of Sydney stood strong with the Muslims of the city. (The New Yorker)
Not everyone was civil about what was happening in Sydney. Uber gouged people looking for a ride in Sydney. (Gawker)
The key witness presented to the Grand Jury in support of Darren Wilson in the Michael Brown shooting may have lied about everything. (Gawker)
Every so often, we take a look at the most epic fails from the week that was in the Fails of the Week. This week, we have five pictures and videos that we think are the most epic fails of the week.
The Lowdown 