Unwinnable

Today in 1987 The Simpsons short appeared on The Tracey Ullman Show, wow! What are you doing this weekend? (more…)

The rule of thumb in screenwriting is that you’ve got ten minutes to get all of your pieces in place. In a mere ten pages you must set up your characters, their motivations, conflicts and the big problem they’ve got to overcome. An efficient writer can pull this feat off even faster. The brilliant ones do it in style; like the Coen Brothers in Raising Arizona, they can cram all that work into a brilliant (admittedly longer than ten minutes) pre-credits sequence. Or a clever screenwriter can break the rules a la Quentin Tarantino or Christoper Nolan and twist the narrative so that the setup is buried somewhere towards the end of the picture, forcing the viewer to puzzle out the whys and wherefores as they watch the player react to complications. (more…)

This past summer, Christopher Nolan ended his “Dark Knight Trilogy” with The Dark Knight Rises, a movie set on bringing the Nolan Bat-Verse to a close. The reviews were mixed. Some praised the movie as a great ending to a great trilogy. Richard Roeper said it was “a majestic, gorgeous, brutal and richly satisfying epic” while others said it was bloated and slow with CNN’s Tom Charity saying the film was a “disappointingly clunky and bombastic conclusion a superior series.”

So where does the end of the trilogy go wrong? Does the trilogy have to have a planned ending in order to work? Or can the story be a product of public reception and directorial impetus? What’s so difficult about ending the trilogy? (more…)

I am a Simpsons purist. Any episode beyond season nine fails to maintain the same irony, humor and presence of its predecessors. Around this time, David Cohen went off to form Futurama with Simpsons creator Matt Groening while notorious recluse (and show genius) John Swartzwelder stopped writing the majority of The Simpsons episodes.
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Like the NFL and NBA before it, The Simpsons is facing the very real threat of a lockout.

20^th Century Fox has issued an ultimatum to the voice cast of The Simpsons to the tune of a 45% salary cut, Deadline.com reported yesterday. While still looked upon as profitable, studio executives are refusing to accept the actors’ proposal to accept a 30% cut in pay, which would see actors receiving about $4 million per season, and agree to make up some of the difference through back-end incentives. This request was summarily declined.

And now negotiations have hit a brick wall, putting a 23^rd season in jeopardy.

In a released statement, 20^th Century Fox admitted its inability “to produce future seasons under this financial model.”

Inability or unwillingness? Seeing as, while far off, a Simpsons cable channel is still discussed as a possibility, 20^th can’t be that strapped.

While this author is calling ‘shenanigans,’ he is begrudgingly prepared for a future without The Simpsons.

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Share your fondest Simpsons memories with Peter via Twitter @peterlangcrime

Steve Jobs announced last night that he is stepping down as CEO of Apple, the company he founded in his garage with Steve Wozniak in 1976. This, of course, isn’t the first time Jobs has left Apple. Apart from medical leaves of absence in the last seven years, Jobs was fired from the company in 1985 amid slumping sales after the company introduced the Macintosh. Jobs would return as a consultant in 1996 after founding NeXT Computing and planting the seeds that would lead to the formation of Pixar. Jobs took the CEO’s chair the following year. (more…)

I first heard about MUGEN, a freeware videogame engine, from a friend at the Geek Flea. If memory serves, he was keen on my Street Fighter figures. MUGEN is primarily used to make custom 2D fighters. Players will design their own characters and sometimes put them up classic arcade characters. Players will also use the platform as a place to settle old geek arguments.

In the case below, the player/designer decided to settle a more recent dispute…