indefinite articles

Dear Nintendo,

With the Wii, you’ve hit upon a surefire, long-lasting approach to the console market, one which Microsoft and Sony are scrambling to appropriate for themselves. So far, you’re doing great, exceeding all the predictions of how well this new “toy” would sell. By emphasizing accessibility, the Wii abandons the usual barrier to entry so often associated with video gaming.

Perhaps the most powerful tool you offer to invite people into your new world are the Miis, adorable cartoon caricatures assembled by users the first time they sit down to use the Wii. It’s an effective method of introducing the most console-challenged members of the family to the virtual spaces of Nintendo’s games.

But you’re forgetting something, Nintendo. You’re forgetting that the Wii is for all of us — its for more than just bare-faced teenagers, its for moms and dads, too. And what do dads have? Beards. Tons of beards. And mustaches.

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It’s not every day you get to see Hervé Villachez eat Cool Whip with Jesus. You see, ‘ol Jessy has parachuted down to the Old West to make his way to Jerualem to meet with his agent Morris to get a song and dance gig. His vengeful father follows close behind, and the Holy Ghost (portrayed by a man wearing a sheet with holes for eyes cut out) tags along, complaining about how underutilized he is in that whole trinity thing. Yeah, it doesn’t make much sense. This confusing parable is part of Robert Downey Sr.’s Greaser’s Palace, a dated psychedelic western that never quite transcends the era in which it was made.

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This Friday: The keystroke of divine inter-selection; a way to fight back when spasms wage war on your sanity; a sneak peek at playing God; the eternal choice between purity and a Slurpee; 47 words about a late funnyman, only four of which you can’t say on television; and the grainy remnants of the best eight hours of your day.

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When The Matrix hit theaters in 1999, it was the 9/11 of the cinema world - suddenly, nothing would be the same again. Directors Larry and Andy Wachowski brought the world bullet time, the special effects technique in which the action is slowed while the camera continues to move in the audience’s real-time. When Keanu Reeves bent back and let the those bullets spiral past him, it felt like time had leapfrogged the present and taken a swan dive into the deep end of the future.

Afterwards, of course, came the wave of movies eager to try out the new technology. Wanted, which comes out this Friday, looks to be little more than a continuation of this trend, the sort of chaff that rolls out between bigger, better summer blockbusters. But under the hood there’s more horsepower than is evident in the trailers. Namely, the newly released bullet time 2.0.

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This week: Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth

Editor’s note: Marco is a relative neophyte to the world of art comics, and this Long Haul serves as an experiment, a chance to see Chris Ware’s comics with a set of fresh eyes. But some context here for the similarly uninitiated: perhaps the most important graphic novel of the past ten years, Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan is the generational successor to Art Spiegelman’s Maus. Hailed by The New Yorker’s Peter Schjeldahl as the “first formal masterpiece” of the medium, Jimmy Corrigan is sure to be a touchstone in the discussion of comics as the artform continues to develop in the coming years. And now, Marco digs in …

I love Chris Ware’s art style and storytelling. This isn’t the superficial love of an adolescent with his first girlfriend - my acne has long since cleared up and my voice hasn’t cracked in over a week! Rather, this is a mature love, filled with complex emotions, respect, and—like any true relationship—criticisms.

But, of course, this is not real love, because there is no true reciprocity. There’s no two-way communication. The pages I read don’t find me the least bit interesting, nor do they want to get to know me. They don’t say, “enough about me, what about you?” But to say we don’t have a conversation isn’t quite true. Indeed, the pages seem to ask, “enough about me, what do you think about me?”

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From the moment I saw a photo of The Adventures of Andre and Wally B in Video Magazine, I’ve loved Pixar. They’ve ushered in a new age of technological progress, eye-popping animation, and quality storytelling in animated pictures. But I have to admit, I’ve approached WALL-E with more than a little trepidation.

Once upon a time, Pixar’s films were a joy to watch. Toy Story breezed by in a fun and exciting 81 minutes. A Bug’s Life and Monsters, Inc. ran about an hour and a half. But like one of those foam dinosaur eggs tossed into a bathtub filled to the brim with hubris, Pixar’s films began to fill out, getting bigger and longer. 111 minutes for Ratatouille. 115 for The Incredibles. A stultifying 116 minutes of the unblinking Cars.

But none of that can be compared with what is about to come. WALL- E is poised to be the Berlin Alexanderplatz of animation, the Decalogue of CG, running over 20 hours long.

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47 Words goes twice-weekly with a glimpse at the rich, frequently overlooked and often brutally depressing world of children’s literature.

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Episodes viewed: “The Enemy Within,” “Mudd’s Women,” “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”, “Miri,” “Dagger of the Mind,” “The Corbomite Maneuver,” “The Menagerie (Parts 1 and 2)”

Gene Roddenberry was a man on a utopian quest. The Trek patriarch saw the blood of men during WWII’s Guadalcanal campaign and climbed to the level of sergeant in the Los Angeles Police Department – experiences that gave him an unclouded look at the human spirit’s darker side. When he established himself as a writer and conceived his masterpiece, he built upon this theme, envisioning a world in which the peoples of Earth had achieved balance, using space exploration to better themselves as well as those they encounter.

But for some reason, even in stardate 2712.4, women’s rights were still firmly grounded in the 1960’s.

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Dear Gwen Stefani,

Seriously, if you hadn’t sported the bindi in 1995, I don’t know what sort of tired trend us pre-teen suburbanites would’ve latched on to. You liberated us from the greasy, grungy, helplessly style-challeneged, rock-chick prototype: the Alanis Morissettes, the Fiona Apples, the Courtney Loves. You kept “cute” interesting in sweet vintage numbers when Jewel, Sarah McLachlan and Tori Amos were sporting gauzy, fairy-inspired, piano-ballad-in-the-desert style get ups. You even managed to glamorize the fierce pencil-thin eyebrows and black lip-liner of The Chola while bearing your broken heart in the “Don’t Speak” video. Screaming, peroxided, and always perfectly manicured, you were a role model with style.

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This week: The cold, hot truth about an idyllic staple of nostalgia revealed; a happy accident helping the New York working class face the day; a great mind whose libido plays linchpin in an interstellar fiasco; a stern reminder to young bookworms that they’re the ones in charge; a revenge yarn in which internal organs set the scenery; and a gaming giant sinking its teeth into the mind-numbing cash cow of self-preservation.

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