Coming This August

            Only one last month left in the summer movie rush.  August tends to be when the studios dump the stuff that wasn’t big enough for the other months, but there are some big names here.  A bad sign, or just trying to avoid the bigger boys?  We also have the end of the summer gaming doldrums with a few major franchises making their mark.  Let’s see what’s coming up!

Movies

Rise of the Planet of the Apes: This is looking very cool.  The first PotA movie in the series (ie, not counting the remake) since 1973, we’ve got James Franco as the scientist who creates the too-smart apes, and Andy Serkis playing a CGI simian, which should be familiar for someone who played King Kong in Peter Jackson’s version.  I have high hopes that I hope aren’t going to be let down.

The Change-Up: Since I show up to the movies pretty early, I tend to see First Look each time, which as been having a behind-the-scenes (read: purely promotional BS) look at this movie, where Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman flatly read off cue cards—oh, excuse me, I mean give absolutely spontaneous and non-scripted responses about the pedigree of the director, how the gross-out comedy is worked into the movie’s plot, and how it’s OK that it’s been done before because that just means people love it.  Dear Mr. Bateman and Mr. Reynolds: Hell. No.

30 Minutes or Less: The concept isn’t exactly pushing me to go see this.  The fact that it’s done by the director of Zombieland and has Jesse Eisenberg and Aziz Ansari has me interested.

The Help: Looks like pure and simple Oscar bait. At the same time, it also looks like that Oscar bait movie that’s actually fun to watch.  I guess the choice is do I see it now, or do I see it after it gets a Best Picture nomination.

Glee: The 3D Concert Movie: Oh yay, now Glee can join the stunning ranks of Hannah Montana and Justin Bieber.

Fright Night: Holy crap, I was just looking at the cast list and David Tennant is in this.  Why the hell are Colin Farrell and Anton Yelchin’s names on the poster, but not his?  Suddenly, my interest has gone up.

Conan the Barbarian: This looks cheesy as hell.  It’ll probably be fun to rent.

Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D: You see, it already has 3D, but it’s also going to have Smell-o-vision, hence the 4D.  Remember, every terrible kids movie that Rodriguez makes is one more year until we see Sin City 2.

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark: Guillermo del Toro produced and wrote this.  Do I need to say anything else?

Colombiana: Could be decent.

Video Games

Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition: I only ever played a little of this game, but it’s apparently very popular.  Street Fighter is one of those series I’ve meant to play more of, so I am all for an XBLA/PSN port of the third one.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution: The third game in the series, and the first since Invisible War.  I’m hoping they’ll hit the mark they missed with IW and make the game console-friendly without making it mediocre.

The Lord of the Rings: War in the North:  On Machinma’s Trailer channel on Youtube, footage of this game has started to be called “Lord of the Eagles: Eagles in the North”.  Every trailer just has a bunch of giant eagles coming down and killing all the enemies.  Oh, also, the game’s going to be really bloody.  Tolkein would be proud, I’m sure.

Driver: San Francisco: I have no idea if this has the video-editing from Driv3r.  I really hope it does.  If not, well, there hasn’t been a Driver game yet that’s had a story mode really worth playing, so maybe they can change that.

Bloodrayne Betrayal: A side-scrolling downloadable Bloodrayne game from WayForward, the creators of Contra 4 and A Boy and His Blob for Wii.  Very interested.