Cinemassacre’s Monster Madness 2k9 and James’ favorite Twilight Zone episodes

I have already done a quick reference to the Monster Madness series at Cinemassacre with my previous post on that topic. Yesterday James announced that this year’s edition will be about horror movies. If you know what I am talking about, you probably know as well that James already made one about horror, it was actually the first one (which I highly recommend to watch by the way). But don’t worry, this will not be some lame recycling as Rolfe will talk about different movies. Remember that there are a whole lot of those in the horror genre. However, if you have no idea what the Monster Madness could be, James publishes a short (by that I mean a few minutes) video every day in the month of October about whatever the topic is, in this case horror movies (again).

Speaking of Horror, or more specifically of things to think about, there’s a new video up today where James reveals his top ten Twilight Zone episodes. I did not really know what it is before I watched the video, yet it seemed somewhat familiar and my first thought was Futurama. Why? Because they have a show in that show called The Scary Door which is somewhat similar and for sure inspired by it, but set in the future. I also noticed that the Simpsons re-told some of the stories in their Treehouse Of Horror episodes. James is nice enough not to spoil the endings of the episodes (except for the one with the window maybe), so go watch it! I was impressed by it and will watch some original videos when I have time.

Source: Cinemassacre

Cinemassacre about Godzilla and 16mm films plus new Fred the Monkey podcast (Update)

In 2008, James Rolfe did a complete review of all the Godzilla movies ever made (see Godzillathon). In my opinion, it is not as entertaining as his History of Horror (same link), but still worth to watch if you are interested in that topic. Anyway, a week ago he finally posted an AVGN review for the Godzilla games! Furthermore he and Mike Matei talk about 16mm films in a trilogy of short movies, from which two are already online. They are really worth to watch and I can’t wait for the next one.

Update: The last episode has been released today.

Speaking of media worth to consume, there is a new Fred the Monkey podcast online called Space Chicken’s Vacation of the Mind. This is a bit surprising as JKR is in a bad condition now, but still was able to keep his deadline (one update per week) so check it out!

Sources: Cinemassacre, JKR

Fred the Monkey, James Rolfe and Inglorious Basterds

One week ago, JKR uploaded an all new FtM podcast. These are like regular episodes/mailbags (in other words damn funny), but longer and without the graphics, so if you haven’t listened to them yet, go ahead and do it now! He also posted a Q&A in his blog, which answers questions from his readers.

James Rolfe was at the Monster Mania Con 13, where talked to various famous people, including Adam West, who played Batman in the 1966 feature film and TV series. The following must have been very awesome:

Adam West said he just saw the film The Dark Knight for his first time (hard to believe). While he commended the film for its production value, he mocked Christian Bale’s raspy voice and did his own impression, to which everyone roared with laughter and applauded. We have witnessed the classic Batman imitating the new Batman. I never imagined seeing that.

…and today he also rated all movies he saw this summer. Inglorious Basterds is one of them, scoring 7 out of 10 on his scale.

If you want to see one of the best movie villains in recent history, look no further than Christoph Waltz who plays a cunning and vicious Nazi officer. His performance deserves an award for sure. Tarantino delivers the goods again. My only complaint is that some of the scenes could have been CUT DOWN a little. I also wish the different characters would have crossed paths more. The opening scene and the final spectacle are the best moments. It’s not as great a set piece as the sword fight in Kill Bill or the car chase in Death Proof, but it’s still another memorable Tarantino scene.

Speaking of which, I’ve also seen this movie in German cinema, sadly not with the original language, and I think it was pretty great. Of course scenes could have been cut down a little, but you can say this to nearly all Tarantino movies, except Kill Bill maybe (I’m talking about the ones I saw here: Kill Bill, Death Proof, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Inglorious Basterds, Jackie Brown). That is just the way he does movies and builds up the characters. I love it!

Sources: JKR’s blog, Cinemassacre, Cinemassacre

Cinemassacre: Ghostbusters Xbox360 Review and New AVGN Game! (Update: AVGN hat)

James did his first gaming review without the Angry Video Game Nerd leading it, which features a great intro and feels – except for the fact that it’s about a game – like one of his movie reviews. Speaking of which, he also did one of those, but I don’t know anything about District 9, so I didn’t watch it (I hate spoilers, you know…). Mike Matei notified us just about a new boxing AVGN fangame by Devin Cook, which is actually downloadable as ATARI-Rom image. As I don’t have the real thing here (but I know it from the Games Convention ‘08), I use Stella as suggested by the article. This opensource emulator can also be compiled under Linux, so when you are on arch

yaourt -S stella

will do the job AURtomagically. The game is fun to play and has some decent retro graphics of course. If you can’t figure the controls out, take a look at the well written manual (seriously, looks like it is a real game).

Update: Not worth a new post, but ScrewAttack made a nice promotion video for the new AVGN hat!

New content on fredthemonkey.com

One of my favorite comedy related websites is JKR’s fredthemonkey.com, a hilarious cartoon show made in flash about a monkey (Fred the Monkey), Space Chicken, Sceb (Space Chicken’s evil brother) and some other characters. It also features so called Mailbags where everyone can just send questions in and Sceb answers them. Something similar are the Podcasts, where the whole team answers questions and tests games. Furthermore there are some music videos with covers of popular songs (new lyrics!). In one of these the show covers a song by American Hi-Fi (this one features only JKR) which lead me directly to that great band I didn’t know before, and the video was very entertaining.

The only downside of the website seems to be that JKR does not do updates too often. Anyway, today I found a blogpost by him where he told his readers that there’s a new movie review on the website! It is about the newest Star Trek movie (if you are looking for more serious reviews, James Rolfe also made one) and it is only the half episode, because he felt like proving that he did something the past time. To be honest I recommend not to watch it yet, only if you know all the other great content of the website already. He didn’t say when he’d finish the current cartoon, but there should be a Mailbag on Friday.

If you never heard any of this before, go watch the first time here cartoon and explore the website, it’s worth it!