Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No wait, it’s this week’s awesome nerdy things worth buying, in your weekly installment of Awesome-O-Rama!
As always, all products are selected by me, and if you see something you dig, click the name, as it will take you right to the product’s related listing at Amazon.com. Any products purchased there give me a lil’ kickback, which keep my recommendations coming – ya dig?
Great, now let’s do this!
A strange, sometimes dark, and overall surreal film (based on a true story, no less), it should come as no surprise that audiences didn’t know what to do with The Informant! when it hit theaters this past fall. I finally got the chance to see it for myself this week, and in a word, I found it to be pretty darn great, if slightly uneven. The flick mixes an unreliable narrator with surreal bits of monologue over very serious moments of dialogue, making the tale of a man who made himself the whistleblower for his own company come off even stranger than the real story was. Add a series of recognizable comedic actors (Patton Oswalt, Andy Daly, Joel McHale) giving unusually serious turns, and director Steven Soderburgh is definitely screwing with your expectations. I give this the recommendation to rent, but if you dig it as much as I did, pick it the heck up.
After the mis-step of Superman: Doomsday, the team behind the DC Universe Animated Film series has been producing nothing but stunning direct to video releases. Justice League: The New Frontier, Green Lantern: First Flight, Superman/Batman: Public Enemies and others have been worthwhile additions to your nerd shelf, and this latest Justice League tale might just be the best. Adapting the classic Earth 2 Crime Syndicate story with the best animation seen on any of their releases so far along with great voicework (James Woods as Owlman is FANTASTIC), it’s downright amazing. Add an exclusive, Steve Niles-written Spectre short, and you have a must have disc. Too rad.
Long touted as the must have, killer app for the mature game enjoying Playstation 3 owner, Heavy Rain has had years of development and rumors to live up to, and if the reviews are true, it has. Mixing a well plotted, Law & Order style story with jawdropping graphics and an innovative, immersive control scheme, Rain has all the tools to grab the eyes of hardcore gamers – but can it help the PS3 grab the casuals? Or is it just too “different?” Time will tell, and the game, as always, is in the hands of the player. I, for one, can’t wait to check it out.
As I think I’ve underlined on this site before, I love the Flight series of graphic novels. Love, love, love them. But what I love them even more for is reintroducing the art of the comic anthology to the mainstream. The best of these ongoing anthology series? Hands down – Popgun. With the release of the 4th volume this week, they continue a great legacy of innovative, beautiful comics wrapped in a stunning cover, and if the tales in the prior 3 volumes are any indications, I long for the moment where this book is in my grubby mitts. Highest recommendation.
