Angry Puppy

We seem to be gamer-themed this week, so here’s the new Resident Evil 5 trailer for your perusal.

In our most recent vlog, guest Flynn DeMarco mentioned the controversy surrounding the trailer that was shown at E3. In a nutshell, the protagonist, Chris Redfield, a white guy, is seen in the trailer killing lots of black zombies. N’Gai Croal of Newsweek criticized the original trailer, saying:

“There was a lot of imagery in that trailer that dovetailed with classic racist imagery.”

Producer Jun Takeuchi has said:

“We didn’t set out to make a racist game or a political statement. We did feel there was a misunderstanding about the initial trailer.”

As Flynn explained, there’s always zombie-killing in the Resident Evil franchise, and the fifth installment takes place in Africa for plot reasons, so it’s not quite as cut-and-dry as it might appear to non-gamers. Some have suggested, however, that the inclusion of a black protagonist in place of Chris Redfield would not only have made the game seem less racist (intentional or otherwise), but would also have added to the relatively small pool of protagonists of color in games.

What are your thoughts? Was this a missed opportunity for inclusion, a misunderstanding or something else?

[Via 1up.com]

JUMP! to AfterElton to see our latest episode!

• Cowboy Bebop: Future Blues (No, it’s a new thing!)
• Men, Women and Chainsaws
• Doctor Who: “The Sontaran Stratagem”
• Lost “There’s No Place Like Home” (Part 1)
• Battlestar Galactica “Guess What’s Coming to Dinner”

After all the usual blather, we have special guest Flynn DeMarco, otherwise known as Fruit Brute at GayGamer.net.

And muchas gracias to our friends at GravityFaggot.com for the great t-shirts!

Constantine came on FX the other night, and I re-watched it, pretending that it had nothing to do with Hellblazer. Viewed through that lens, it’s not so bad, but it still falls in my dead zone: neither good enough to sit through nor bad enough to laugh through. And in the interest of full disclosure, I admit that I failed to disassociate it from the comic series. I mean, come on! It’s John Constantine, innit!

I’d love to hear from people who think otherwise (it’s so subjective), but I found this Constantine more tiresome than compelling. A suicide-induced Flatliners moment damned him, and now, like some two-bit exorcist, he goes door to door sending errant demons back to Hell to curry God’s favor (yawn) so he can get into heaven. Hey! Isn’t that almost the plot of Reaper? Where’s the nuance from the comics?

Fortunately for you, me and everyone we know, Tilda Swinton has a habit of making otherwise meh movies worth watching. Here she is as the wonderfully androgynous archangel Gabriel:

John Constantine, Tilda Swinton in hooker pants kicking Keanu Reeves’ ass, and, hey, it’s even got boy-of-the-moment Shia LeBeouf as Chas… How could it have gone so wrong?

We’ve made it clear that we think Keanu Reeves as Constantine is some of the worst casting ever. Re-watch the clip above and imagine the same lines acted as if they were based on any version of John Constantine from the comics. Not so bad, right? But that faux-intense effect that Mr. Reeves uses kills any affection and respect I had for the character.

I’m not savvy enough to discern if that’s a fault of the acting or the directing, but here’s director Francis Lawrence’s IMDB entry. It’s impressive in its own right, but there’s not much in the way of turning other successful dark comic series into films.

As we said in the vlog, don’t enter the Hellblazer universe though this movie. As an alternative, I’ve put some of my favorite TPBs in this handy Amazon widget.

I’d love to hear your recommendations. And I especially want to hear from those who liked Constantine the film. John Constantine is too close to my heart for me to be truly objective, and I’m open to hearing what good things I might have missed in the movie.

Have you ever wondered what John Barrowman would be doing if he hadn’t been cast in Doctor Who (and subsequently in Torchwood)? In our next episode, we talk about his role in 2002’s direct-to-dvd Shark Attack 3: Megalodon

From the CGI to the script, this movie is 100% awful, but it’s worth seeing just for this unexpected line from John Barrowman. [NSFW unless you're wearing headphones.]

Embedding for that video was “disabled by request”, but not from John Barrowman. He proudly displays the movie on his official site:

Filmed in Bulgaria in 2001, Megalodon has become a B-movie cult classic and features an ad-lib from John that has achieved legendary status among the movie’s fans.

The story is that he just made that line up on the spot as a joke on his co-star, but they left it in the movie. My guess is that no one noticed. Watch these clips, and you’ll understand how easily that could have happened: Read the rest of this entry »

Our NY Comic-Con spectacular-palooza-thon episode is now up at AfterElton.com. We recorded it last week, so adjust the temporal references accordingly!

In this episode:

• Headlines: Gay Metalheads Rejoice; Superheroes’ Domestic Partners, Whedon Alumni Update; Manazons
• NY Comic-Con: The Sexual Orientation Game; Tim Fish; Sticky Pages panel on gays in comics
• Stuff We Read: (Young Bottoms in Love; Justice Society of America)
• Stuff We Watch: (Battlestar Galactica: “The Ties That Bind”; Torchwood: “Exit Wounds”; Reaper: “Rebellion”)
• Review: Milo Ventimiglia plays gay in Cursed
• New addition to the Gallery of Gay Action Figure

Be sure to read Marc’s review on AfterElton. We also posted some of our photos on our Facebook page. If you were at Comic-Con, post your photos too!