Game Theory

Ever wonder what the top-rated game system launch titles are? Sure you did.

Note the supremacy of Dreamcast. Damn you, Sony.

This video (thanks to Galley friend P.L.) has apparently been making the rounds. Laugh all you want, but I always knew those ballerinas were filthy.

To all my homeys in lockdown at the Firm:

This Kirkland & Ellis recruitment video is priceless. Sample: "I fill my day as much as possible, I go home, I have dinner with my family. And then I go work again, as necessary." Remember, this isn't a warning, it's the sales pitch.

Bonus: Check out the podcast pitches at Anonymous Law Firm.

Trailer City, 2

Turns out Casino Royale isn't a remake of Casino Royale, it's a remake of From Russia, with Love.

Trailer City

So sure, I'll see anything with Emma Thompson. But a movie with Emma Thompson, Buster Bluth, and Edna Mode?

Game on.

The Poetry of the Macho Man

"I've been in the Danger Zone east of the Pacific Ocean, west of London, England, south of Mars, and north of Hell."



That's a shout-out to all my homeys. You know who you are.

Feel free to nominate your favorite Randy Savage moments.

MNF

From Galley Brother B.J.:

mmentators kept talking about whether Parcells could put Bledsoe back in. I was dieing to see Parcells go over to Bledsoe to tell him to go back in, only to have Bledsoe laugh at Parcells (or hit him with the Stone Cold Stunner) flip off the crowd and walk off the field.

Romo had a chance to become my favorite non-Eagle player in the league. He hit a wide open (as in no one within 10 yards wide open) Owens in the hands on 4th down halfway through the 4th quarter, and Owens dropped it. If Romo would have bitched Owens out on the sideline, he’d have become a superstar in my book.

The Giants pretty much won the NFC East last night.

Kornheiser needs to get dropped from MNF. Not because he’s a bad color analyst (which he is), but because every piece of his I’ve read or appearance of him on PTI I’ve seen since he started MNF has consisted of him bitching about doing MNF. Either he’s groaning about holding back on being snarky and making empty promises to change next week or he’s complaining about how he doesn’t have time to follow anything else because he spends all of his time on a bus looking at football stats.

Wii Nugget of the Day

From IGN:

Microsoft debuted Xbox 360 with a miniscule amount of systems. Sony is set to do the same with PlayStation 3. But Wii will kickoff in America on November 19 backed by a whopping one million units and a steady flow of more shipments. By the end of the year, approximately four million Wiis will be available around the globe and the chances are extremely strong that they'll all go sold. Nintendo has delivered a lowball estimate of six million Wiis available by March 2007, but insider reports suggest that as many as 12 million pieces of hardware could be available by that time period.

PS3 Shortages, continued

Sony to ship 2 million PS3 units by close of 2006.

Or maybe not. Says Sony's Jack Tretton, "The honest answer is it's more of a target."

But the 6 million units by March 2007 is still written in stone! (For now.)

Fly, Eagles, Fly (Part II)

Gally Brother B.J. does not agree with my sunny assessment of the Birds:

We have very different views on the Eagles.

They're driving me insane this week because aside from the game against Dallas, they haven't played any full games. They'll play for a half or a quarter and dominate the other team (2nd half vs. Green Bay; 1st half vs. NYG; 1st half vs. SF; 3rd quarter vs. NO; 4th quarter vs. Tampa Bay; 2nd and 4th quarters against Houston), but the rest of the game they're awful and they practically try to give away the game (the 4th quarter collapse vs. NYG; the near collapse vs. SF; losing in the 1st half to Green Bay). You watch one of their games and you end up spending part of it thinking they're Super Bowl contenders and the rest of the game expecting them to go 4-12. That fucks with your head.

The Eagles final drive at the end of the second quarter was brutal to watch because with 1st and goal at the 5 with 10 seconds left, you knew the Eagles weren't going to score. (Andy Reid why are you calling anything other than a fade to the back corner? And Donovan, what the fuck are you thinking throwing to someone on the 2 with 3 defenders right by him--and not seeing the guy who looked pretty fucking open 7 yards behind that receiver in the end zone?)

Speaking of McNabb, I hate to do this, 'cause he and Westbrook are almost the entire offense (and the offense is the entire team), but the loss goes almost entirely on his shoulders. In addition to the above mentioned meltdown at the end of the 2nd quarter, Radio Active Man threw two pick 6's. The rest of the blame goes on Fallout Boy for not taking a knee on the 1, or waiting at the goal line and not crossing until a Tampa defender got within 5 yards on the Eagles' last offensive play. Because if you're a real Eagles fan, you knew the defense would give up a last-second field goal

I can't blame the defense for the loss. Despite getting zero pressure on Gradkoski (on Tampa's final play before the field goal, he had enough time to trip over himself, get up, and still make a read or two), unless you count the sack where they were called for a 15-yard facemask, they only gave up 9 points. They only gave up about 20 yards on Tampa's final "drive" and they forced a shaky kicker to make a 62 yard field goal with the game on the line.

(Fun fact: Tampa's kicker was 0 for 3 on field goal attempts of 40 or more yards going into the game, but 2 for 2, including the 62 yarder, yesterday. In the span of 6 days, Arizona loses a game because its kicker, who set a bunch of records last year, misses a 40 yarder and the Eagles lose because a kicker makes a 62 yarder.)

"Deuce"

Not Bigelow. Galley Favorite Angela Lansbury is returning to the White Way in, of all things, a play about tennis. Sign me up.

Fly, Eagles, Fly

The good news is that the Eagles just killed the Bucs by the numbers. I mean, outgaining them 506 yards to 196 yards? 22 first downs to 14 first downs? 7.7 yards per rush to 3.7 yards per rush? 8.3 yards per pass to 3.0 yards per pass? That's Eagles football, baby.

What's that, you say? The final score? Sure, the Eagles may have lost the game and some people may get bogged down with that sort of linear thinking, but there's a deeper way to look at yesterday's debacle:

The Eagles are, as I've been saying to anyone who would listen, a bad team. This is a 6- or 7-win squad. If they finished 8-8, it would be a real achievement. The first six games were fool's gold. Here's the combined record of the teams the Eagles have beaten: 9-14.

Go ahead and look at the schedule. Find the wins remaining on the board. Tennessee? Remember, they'll be playing the Vince Young Titans, not the team that started the season winless. Washington? Mabye the home game. Jacksonville? Maybe. Those are the three best chances for victories. Everything else looks like a stretch.

So why was yesterday not terrible? Because if you look at the Eagles as a 6-10 team, not a 4-2 team, then you can find the positives. You can be happy about the comeback and about how great McNabb looked in the second half. When bad teams lose flukey games, there are positives to be found. You shouldn't have expected them to win in the first place.

P.S.: I'm not hating on the Birds. Actually, I think that this team is eminently lovable. They're fun to watch and they have great characters. And, like a cancer patient in remission after chemo, you can't help but rooting for them. And hope that by next year, they'll be back to 100%.

Joey Lauren Adams: auteur.

Seriously.

Pajiba Love

An excellent round up of all sorts of news, including this awesome bit:

In The Break-Up news, Jennifer Aniston is attempting to send a message to Hollywood that she’s more than just a pair of breasts attached to a spinal cord: She’s also an important actress, damnit. And what better way to demonstrate this than to produce and star in a film based on a study found in a Deepak Chopra book?

Madden Wii

Galley Friend P.G. sends us this video link to EA developers talking about Madden '07 for Wii. You might salivate.

No Disrespect

But I have about zero interest in seeing Borat. But I do have the love for S.B.C.. Check it.

Actor Wesley Snipes has been indicted on no less than eight counts of tax fraud and may face 16 years in prison. Federal prosecutors claim Snipes failed to file his returns for six years and owes the government close to $12 million. Not even Willie Mays Hayes can outrun these charges. No roundhouse kick will knock down these allegations. White Men Can't Jump but they sure can find a way to send you to jail. U.S. Marshals will soon be knocking on his door. Let's just say The Money Train will be making one last stop--to Riker's Island! To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar!

Okay, enough already. This is serious stuff. But let me add that if the feds end up putting Snipes away, there will most definitely be an increase in the population of vampires.

That Terrible Chevy Ad

Seth Stevenson is all over it:

Maybe the red-state viewer, to whom the ad is likely directed (I assume that's the main target market for pickups), interprets the overall statement as an optimistic, can-do, morning-in-America kind of thing: We've come through the bad times and we're ready to kick some ass again. But to me, this spot feels more like the advertising equivalent of Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech. It arrives at an awkward, unsettled moment in the American psyche (underscored by the 9/11 and Katrina imagery in the montage), and it almost seems the ad hopes to capture the essence and feeling of that moment. Dredging up all these depressing incidents in our recent past, and then saying, "This is our country," sure seems like an effort to address our "crisis of confidence."

I guess I'd ask Chevy: How'd that strategy work out for Carter?

Grade: D. Automotive blog Jalopnik reports that an early version of the ad included footage of a nuclear mushroom cloud. Well, that would have brightened things up. I wonder if they could squeeze in the Rodney King beating and the Abu Ghraib photos, too.

Trailer City

Here's the German trailer for DOA: Dear or Alive. Is this the greatest film since Mortal Kombat? Probably.

You should click on that link. It's amazing. Like D.E.B.S. meets Van Damme's Street Fighter. You've never seen anything like it.

Bonus: Here's the U.S. trailer. The plot seems to make less sense in English.

Also, there's Chris Guest's new For Your Consideration, whose play-within-a-play is called Home for Purim. Try to stop laughing. The trailer also has the great Fred Willard telling a gag about blind prostitutes. "You know what they say about blind prostitutes, don't you? You've really gotta hand it to them?"

Wha' happen!

Hi-Def Clarity

Galley Friend and Early Adopter S.B. is worked up over this less-than-lucid piece in USA Today:

According to USA Today's Michelle Kessler, "Problems with high-definition DVD players are dragging down the entire high-end television market." Intrigued, but skeptical, I took a look at the piece. I was so confused at the end of it that my head kind of hurts now . . .

The analysis starts by showing that high def DVD players are selling more weakly than expected; instead of 4.5 million units being sold, only 1.5 million have sold. None of this is particularly surprising since, a.) consumers are wary about investing many hundreds of dollars in a player when either HD-DVD or Blu Ray will obsolete in two or three years, and b.) the Blu-Ray's primary inroad, the PS3, has yet to hit the shelves (and when it does, it will do so with far less units than originally anticipated). OK, fine, I'm with her so far.

But then comes this headscratcher: "The problems have been brewing for years. They're starting to have a financial impact now since players are finally in stores. And they're affecting:

* Programming. Since high-definition TVs and players aren't yet mainstream, content for them remains limited. On TV, HD is generally limited to sports, news, prime-time shows and premium channels such as HBO. Only about 100 HD DVD and 50 Blu-Ray DVD titles are out."

To which I responded with a resounding 'Huh? What does one have to do with the other?' What does the number of HD/Blu Ray DVDs have to do with the programming options? Furthermore, people have been buying HDTV sets for the last couple of years before next gen DVD players had even been released, let alone become widely available/affordable. How could it possibly make sense that a wider variety of HD movie-watching options would hamper the growth of the market? People may be confused about which next gen DVD player to buy, but I don't know why the new options would deter the purchase of a television itself, since whichever format wins will work with any HDTV.

Kessler finally gets to the point at the end when she says that 60% of HDTVs are bought by sports fans, and that only 1 in 5 HDTVs is sold with a corresponding DVD player--"Presumably a must-have for a movie fan." But I say: poppycock. I'm about as big a movie fan as there is, and if you have a decent progressive scan DVD player to go along with your HDTV (especially if it's a model featuring 1080p) you're just fine for now without an HD DVD/Blu Ray player. We're not talking about audio cassettes vs. CDs, here. The difference in picture isn't big enough to justify the outrageous current cost. In a few years, Blu Ray or HD DVD will probably become the standard, especially since they're both backward compatible, but at this point the cost vs. the benefit is pretty small.

Furthermore, the piece's overarching point that HDTV sales are off is clearly contradicted by the chart included with the piece. I see a pretty steady 45 degree climb between 2003 and the end of 2006 (1.2 million HD homes to a projected 9.4 million HD homes). Once again, I don't doubt that next gen DVD sales are off; you'd be a sucker to buy one before the dust settles (never forget Betamax!). That being said, nothing at all suggests that the lack of a legit high def DVD format is slowing growth in the market, because the growth of the market isn't slowing! Yeesh. Kind of shoddy story.