The best movies about how freezing it is outside

Here in the Midwest we're experiencing a fun POLAR VORTEX, with temperatures getting the lowest they've been in two decades. It's made me think about movies that remind me of how cold it is outside. A google search for "winter movies" brings nothing but articles on cozy Christmas films. I don't want those. I want movies about it being freezing outside. What's your favorite SUBZERO TEMPERATURE FILM?

The Thing (1982)

The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Hanna (2011)

Fargo (1996)

The Shining (1980)

Three trends in gaming: 2012

Well, 2012 is finally over and done with, and quite a lot happened.  To be honest, I didn't play that many new video games in 2012 (you'll see that pop up later), so I figured a more important article I could actually write about would be a brief analysis of three trends in the larger "gaming community". Here they are, in no particular order:

Feminism in gaming finally gets some news, or "Why I don't want to identify as a gamer"

Gaming and gamer culture in the past have been particularly patriarchal, and despite a few important improvements remains strongly in thrall to the straight white male demographic.  Incidentally, I am a part of this demographic, and in addition haven't really done serious research into these topics, so MASSIVE DISCLAIMER, I can't really speak for any of this other than my perspective.  However, they were definitely big news in the gaming community this year, which should be a good sign.  Anita Sarkeesian and Tropes vs Women  caused a firestorm of controversy basically by existing, and showed everyone who had forgotten just how disgusting "gaming culture" truly is.  Ditto for some of the backlash towards Jennifer Hepler, a writer at BioWare, whose opinions on the state of gaming were for the most part attacked not for their validity, but because of her gender (yes, yes, there were several valid critiques, but they were exceptions to the rule).

The idea that lauched a thousand hateful comments

On the gaming side of things, the big problem seems to be trailers.  The truly skeevy new Tomb Raider trailer, and the information released by the developers.  Apparently, you make female characters more interesting by shrinking their chest size and putting all those extra pixels into making sexual assault (nice try, PR department, nobody bought it) an integral part of character development.  Lovely.  And of course, who could forget the Hitman: Absolution trailer with the infamous naughty nunsploitation?

So, after all that bad news, there are glimmers of hope on the horizon.  For one, the mainstream press has actually been on the ball in expressing condemnation of this blatant asshattery.  If nothing else, the fact that these things are recognized as problems by the establishment is a good thing, and hopefully the article in a years' time will be more positive.  We can all be better.

Where's Han? Star Wars' Reluctance to Embrace Its Most Iconic Era

I’ve been waiting for a Han Solo game my entire life. It makes sense: a fan-favorite character, a swashbuckling bounty hunter with plenty of adventures and hijinks all around the galaxy. It could essentially be Grand Theft Auto in space, and players could pimp out the Millennium Falcon to their liking!

Seems like a perfect fit. So why hasn’t there been a single video game with Han Solo as the primary character, other than 2003′s Star Wars: Flight of the Falcon on Game Boy Advance?

How did we get to this point? I blame it all on two titles: Star Wars Galaxies and Knights of the Old Republic. When both games came out in summer 2003, it changed everything. KotOR was one of the first hugely successful, big-budget Star Wars video games not based at all on the era of the original film trilogy. It took place long before that, when Jedi abounded. Along with this came Galaxies, an MMO taking place in the era of Episodes IV, V, and VI. It was a gargantuan commercial flop.

The success of KotOR and the failure of Galaxies has pushed LucasArts away from games based on the original movie trilogy. There have been a few exceptions, but by and large, it seems video games have unfortunately become the exclusive realm of Star Wars‘ Expanded Universe. Maybe this is great news for fans of the hundreds of Star Wars tie-in novels that have been written, but for the rest of us fans, it’s a shame. It may be a long time before Han Solo finally gets his own game.

The upcoming Star Wars 1313 shows some promise, though. While it’s not connected to any of the films, the developers maintain that players will NOT be able to use a lightsaber. In our lightsaber-obsessed Star Wars gaming community, that’s great news to me. The seedy Coruscant underworld setting looks much darker than previous SW games, and the developers claim it deals with “mature themes.” We’ll see what that means, though; it’s always a gamble when franchises seek to hard-boil themselves. In an effort to appear more grown-up, many franchises lose their heart and soul–just look at Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within or Max Payne 3. Hopefully Star Wars 1313 bucks the trend.

One Man Lord of the Rings: nerd comedy gold

Last night I witnessed Charles Ross' One Man Lord of the Rings at Woolly Mammoth. If you've never been there before, Woolly Mammoth is a little independent theater in Penn Quarter that not only hosts plays, but creates their own edgy, punk rock productions as well. It's about a block from the Archives/Navy Memorial station.

Charles Ross is the Canadian behind the now-legendary One-Man Star Wars Trilogy which he's been touring with for over nine years now, and last year he finally acquired the permission from Peter Jackson & Co. to perform his rendition of the Tolkien classics. One Man Lord of the Rings is done in the same style as his Star Wars trilogy: reenacting all three films by himself in just over an hour, without any props and wearing only a black jumpsuit. He plays 42 different characters, depicts each one as a unique entity (Legolas constantly brushes his hair, Denethor can't stop greedily eating baby tomatoes), and provides ample nerdy inside jokes throughout.

Of course Ross' impression of Gollum is spot-on. This is often considered the mark of a great Lord of the Rings reenactor, but I don't think it ends there. His true success is his perfect Uruk-hai voice. Most people don't even think about what these baddies sound like, since they play a relatively small role in the story. But it's a voice we all know too well: "FIND THE HALFLINGS!" This unique death-metal-vocalist-in-the-army voice is nearly impossible for most people to do, but Ross gets it exactly right.

The real key of it all, of course, is the humor. We didn't pay to see The Lord of the Rings in 65 minutes. We paid to see a hilarious parody of The Lord of the Rings in 65 minutes. If you've never read the books or seen the movies, this performance probably won't be funny at all, but that's how it should be. It's a production aimed squarely at huge nerds who would get the White Tree of Gondor tattooed on their arm *cough cough*. Not only does Ross perform Star Wars and LotR at theaters, he also does it at nerd conventions around the world. I love it.

I had forgotten how much I love Woolly Mammoth. The building itself features beautiful industrial-modern architecture, and the people working there are active in the vibrant D.C. indie theater scene. If you've never been to a play at Woolly Mammoth, you really need to experience it firsthand. Unfortunately, One Man Lord of the Rings only runs through the end of this week, but there's a lot more to choose from, like The Vibrator Play and The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.

Charles Ross' attention to detail in his work is fantastic. He hits many of the key lines from the films that aren't exactly integral to the storyline, but are famous lines nonetheless. He does a full recreation of Legolas' takedown of an Oliphaunt followed by Gimli's "That still only counts as one!" He puts adequate emphasis on Sam's slow-motion "sharrre the loaadddd" from The Return of the King. But my favorite has to be his subtle reference to the greatest Lord of the Rings-related YouTube video of all time... "They're Taking the Hobbits to Isengard":