| Forza Motorsport 2: Dan Greenawalt Interview
With Forza Motorsport 2s maker Turn 10 just days away from product certification, its hard to imagine the development team thinking about anything more than sticking a fork in this baby. Turn 10s hard work and true car lust is about to pay off for racing game fans too, as Forza Motorsport 2 is scheduled to hit shelves on May 29th. With a build finally in our mitts, we can lead up to the start of the racing season in Forza Motorsport 2 with tons of coverage, including a look at the cars, tracks, and online components of this all-inclusive car nuts dream. But before we break the tires loose, we wanted to catch Forza Motorsport 2s lead game designer Dan Greenawalt before he takes a well-deserved vacation after certification submittal. Dan has worked on racing titles like Midtown Madness and Rallisport Challenge in the past, as well as the original Forza Motorsport for the Xbox.
HarperCollins on board with Sharkey
Lisa Sharkey, the former "Good Morning America" producer selected by HarperCollins to fill the shoes of Judith Regan, has tapped several editors from Regan's former imprint to join her staff. ReganBooks longtimers Maureen O'Brien and Doug Grad were named executive editor and senior editor, respectively, of HarperCollins' Creative Development Team, headed by Sharkey. Also named was editor Matt Harper, who reports to Sharkey, and associate editor Stephanie Fraser, who reports to O'Brien and Grad. In the wake of Regan's acrimonious departure from HarperCollins, the publisher shuttered her West Coast publishing operation and offered jobs to many of her former employees in New York. HarperCollins tapped Sharkey to head its newly created Creative Development Team to aggressively chase pop-culture and ripped-from-the-headlines tomes to farm out to various HarperCollins imprints.
Panel at OU discusses new trend of casual voyeuristic violence
There's a new mischievous teenage pastime coming to town, and this time the stakes are higher than sneaking into Dad's cabinet to find that R-rated movie you weren't supposed to watch. Look out, America: Here comes happy-slapping. Three panelists discussed happy-slapping, the London teenage phenomenon that is also the subject of an upcoming Ohio University School of Theater production, during the school's regular brownbag lunch meeting Friday. "American gangs have been beating people randomly as a part of that culture for a long time," Thomas Vander Ven, criminology director and sociologist at OU, said of America's violent tendencies. "Filming the violence is new, but the behavior is not." At the brownbag meeting, participants explained that happy-slapping is a random violent act that has becoming popular among London youth and has begun to spread to the United States and other places via online forums such as YouTube.
'Grindhouse' Reviewed by Nick Schager
In a pop culture landscape as hungrily cannibalistic as today's, cinematic nostalgia and homage has lost much of its once enticing luster. The indulgent fun of referencing and rehashing the past has worn so thin that even VH1's gaggle of third-rate Best Week Ever and I Love the [Insert Decade] talking heads seem barely capable of mustering enthusiasm for the latest derogatory smack-down on their own industry brethren. The cultural infatuation with retro navel-gazing is now pronounced to the point that it brings into question whether the practice hasn't seriously debilitated our collective imaginations, which have become so narrowly focused that it sometimes feels as if half of our mainstream entertainment takes as its primary influence mainstream entertainment. It's an inward circle that -- at least in the cinematic arena -- proceeds with no clear direction and even less of a meaningful destination, with deconstruction often taking a back seat to regurgitation as countless filmmakers prove themselves stunted adolescents whose worldview is primarily confined to the movies and TV shows of their youths.
Column: Poptimist #3
The future turned 30 this year. 2000AD, the weekly British sci-fi comic, hit its fourth decade in February, and is marking the occasion with parties and an official history. Its newsstand heyday is well behind it-- these days the comic is owned by videogame developers Rebellion and sells to a small but steady core audience. But its pop-cult influence continues. The American comics biz is shot through with former 2000AD regulars like Mark Millar, writer of Marvel Comics' Civil War-- easily this year's biggest-selling U.S. comics series. Civil War is quite easily summarized. The Government decides it's time to register superheroes. Iron Man agrees. Captain America doesn't. They fight. When I read it, I recognised Millar's writing voice immediately. It's 2000AD through and through: cynical, callous, blackly humorous, never knowingly subtle, and fiercely concise.
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