It’s been a slow week in the world of entertainment as Christmas break is in full gear! Anyway, you should be busy at the cinemas as there are plenty of flicks to check out! Evangeline Lilly once again appears in the final installment of The Hobbit films. So let’s kick it all off with her.
After the jump, the list of overpaid actors, Star Trek is getting fast and furious, Playstation got some issues and Dr. Evil schools everyone on how to run a proper evil organization. Continue reading
Digging through The Lowdown Blog inbox introduces all sorts of great things sent to us that we didn’t have time to include on the blog during the year. One such interesting post idea came to us from our friends at Movoto.
As they are wont to do, they did one of their trademark real estate valuations on a video game property. One of the valuations that I thought was the most interesting is for one of the greatest games of all-time. The team at Movoto asked how much would Aerith’s house cost you could buy that cute little house in the dirty slums of Midgar. Their handy infographic tells us the answer.
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)
So it looks like everyone will be swarming to the theatres to catch the final installment of The Hobbit in theatres. While most are looking for it to neatly tie up the prequel trilogy, apparently the film has left a lot to be desired. On the other end of the spectrum, people won’t be flocking to see The Interview since it won’t be hitting the theatres anytime soon thanks to hacker threats. In the meantime, I guess you can catch a glimpse of Lizzy Caplan to feel a bit better over not seeing her in the movie.
After the jump, first look at Jessica Chastain in Crimson Peak, Mark Wahlberg is in for more Transformers, news on The Interview getting the rug pulled from right under it, Barack Obama shares his favourite film of 2014, children’s movies can be quite traumatizing and Santa is real! Continue reading
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.
The Lowdown 