Demonbaby Awards 2007

Welcome To The 2007 Demonbaby Awards

2008-02-01T00:45:00.000-08:00

Every year in December and January, thousands of websites, magazines, and TV shows clamor to assemble their yearly "best" and "worst" lists for movies, or music, or books, or whatever it might be. And, well, since everyone else is doing it, I figured it was time for Demonbaby to jump on the bandwagon. But instead of trying to bore you with lists of which things were "better" than others (a retarded notion in the first place), I decided to give awards for all manner of things I thought were good, or bad, or clever, or stupid, or weird, or none of the above, in 2007.

The first set of awards are the Music Video Awards, since someone needs to show MTV how it's done. Awards include Best Performance By A Klingon Hipster In A Music Video, and the Please, Punch Me In The Fucking Face Award.

Update: The Video Game Awards are now up!

The rest of the awards - for gadgets, technology, and 2007's Heroes & Douchebags - will be added over the next few days, and in the meantime you can peruse a whole lot of great stuff from last year in the Demonbaby Store's special Favorites From 2007 section.

The Demonbaby Video Game Awards for 2007

2008-01-10T02:29:00.001-08:00

2007 was a great year for video games. With all three next-gen consoles going full steam ahead, there were tons of fantastic offerings for every taste. You can see my picks for favorite games on individual consoles in the 2007 Favorites section. Here though, you'll find an assortment of unusual awards highlighting some of the year's best game-related offerings - but since this is Demonbaby, you'll mostly find awards for the worst, weirdest, and dumbest of the past year.

Best Gaming Experiences Of The Year On Completely Opposite Ends Of The Spectrum:
Super Mario Galaxy and Bioshock

Without equal, the most enjoyment I've gotten out of video games in the last year has been the time I've spent flipping, jumping, flying, bouncing, and floating through the gorgeous, imaginative worlds of Super Mario Galaxy, and, in a very different way, the time I've spent battling my way through the dark, eerie, underwater world of Rapture in Bioshock.

Super Mario Galaxy achieves, above all, the sense of wonder and absolute fun that you felt as a child when you first played the original Super Mario Bros. The sense of surprise and discovery with each bizarre, unique new galaxy you leap into will make you smile over and over again, and the way it feels to dash around spherical worlds and play with the constantly-changing rules of gravity is superb. Add in perfectly-integrated Wii controls, beautiful graphics and art direction, and a fantastic Disney-esque orchestral score, and you have an unequaled masterpiece. Easily the best platform game I've ever played, and the best game of 2007 - there's little I can do to properly describe Galaxy - you just need to get it in your hands and feel how fun it is.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, Bioshock may not make you feel like a kid again, but it does, well, let you kill kids. At its core Bioshock is a very well-made first-person horror shooter, with cool weapons, great enemies, and a lot of awesomely creepy moments. But so are a lot of games. What elevates Bioshock to something truly special is the awe-inspiring world it creates. Set in 1960, Bioshock introduces you to Rapture, an underwater city built secretly by an idealistic billionaire who sought to create a utopia of genetically enhanced people. Naturally, it's all gone terribly wrong, and by the time you arrive in Rapture its citizens have gone mad and the place is in ruins. This results in one of the most beautifully-realized fictional environments in video game history - an art deco dreamworld of the 1950's with a Jules Verne twist, but weathered and rusted, flooded and burned, with flickering neon, creaking support beams, dripping ceilings, and jukeboxes crowing eerie old '50's music that skips and warps from water damage. Every detail is meticulously crafted, every room perfectly designed, the film noir lighting is moody and dynamic, and the sound design - particularly in surround sound - is haunting and utterly absorbing. Then there are the frightening and bizarre Big Daddies, lumbering mechanical beasts who patrol Rapture's depths, guarding eerie little girls who aren't as innocent as they seem. It's the stuff of both dreams and nightmares, and it's all under an umbrella of breathtaking art direction to rival any film I saw in 2007. Additionally, dozens of characters, portrayed by some of the best voice acting I've heard in a video game, flesh out a rich back story that makes Rapture feel astoundingly real. You feel it as a physical place, as a real place with history and depth, and as a society formed in hubris and torn apart by man's brutal, selfish nature. It's one of the most immersive gaming environments I've had the pleasure of exploring, and when it was over, I didn't want to leave. Bioshock will satisfy any gamer's need for tense action and big guns, but it will satisfy a curious other type of person as well: anyone who appreciates masterfully-crafted works of art.

Most Unexpectedly Awesome Game Ending:
Portal

Portal, a short but fantastic game included in the great Orange Box game collection, has topped many best-of-2007 lists. And while its concept, gameplay, and presentation are top-notch, it's the twisted, hilarious HAL-inspired computer antagonist, speaking to you throughout the game in a glitchy female voice, who really makes the game memorable. Named GLaDOS, the computer voice promises you a party with cake if you complete the Aperture Science Research Lab's deadly tests.

Spoiler Alert: At the the end of Portal, when you've famously discovered that "the cake is a lie" and destroyed the menacing GLaDOS, the camera zooms into the rubble of the research lab and reveals GLaDOS alive and well, with the promised cake. And then... she sings a song. It's such an unexpected moment that it's guaranteed to incite laughter. It's a brilliantly ridiculous song, performed as the credits roll, indicating that despite your apparent victory, the whole thing went exactly as GLaDOS planned, even if she's a little heartbroken that you tried to killed her. The song, written by nerd musician Jonathan Coulton, has become an internet sensation amongst gamers, though your appreciation of it will likely depend on your familiarity with Portal. Here it is, the full ending of Portal with the song "Still Alive," performed by GLaDOS:

Best Documentary About A Douchebag With A Mullet Playing Donkey Kong:
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

In the spirit of Spellbound and Murderball, 2007's premier niche competition documentary follows the world champions of Nintendo's 1981 arcade classic, Donkey Kong. No, it's not a documentary of old footage from '80's arcade championships - this takes place now, with grown men still trying to outdo each other's scores to claim the record. The best part of this film is its colorful cast of middle-aged nerds from the golden age of arcades. Chief among them is Billy Mitchell, widely regarded as "the greatest arcade video game player of all time." Billy has a cocky attitude, a mullet, an American flag tie, and a face that screams "I'm a fucking asshole":

His epic struggle against a mild-mannered school teacher for the crown of World Donkey Kong Champion plays out fantastically in The King Of Kong, making it the most entertaining movie about gamers since, well, this:

Best Breeding Ground For The Next Billy Mitchell:
Pac-Man Championship Edition

I'm a huge fan of classic arcade games, and have quite a few full-sized cabinets in my home. There's nothing that quite compares to the challenge, addictiveness, and unparalleled gameplay of masterpieces like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Galaga, Robotron, and Space Invaders. The key was in the deceptiveness of their simplicity - for while Pac-Man seemed to be as basic as running around and avoiding ghosts, attempting to truly master the game reveals more complexity than you could possibly imagine. So attempts at updating those old classics over the years has never particularly worked, failing to capture the elusive magic that made them so perfect. But last year, Pac-Man's original creator Toru Iwatani unveiled the first true update to the game in 26 years, Pac-Man Championship Edition, a downloadable game for Xbox Live Arcade - and amazingly, it's an absolute blast. With just the right amount of tweaking and just the right amount of familiarity, Championship Edition gives Pac-Man a facelift and adds addicting, challenging new modes, resulting in a wildly fun, reinvigorated game that's one of the best original offerings on XBLA. It even has graphic and sound upgrades that are surprisingly tasteful, a rarity in XBLA retro updates. And of course, your scores are ranked online, so you can instantly see how pitifully far behind you are from the next generation's Billy Mitchell.

Best/Worst Game Of The Year, Possibly Ever:
Earth Defense Force 2017

Everyone's familiar with "B" movies, and many people, like myself, have a soft spot for them - movies so shitty and ridiculous, so low budget and low concept, they're completely enjoyable. Movies whose weaknesses become their strengths. Strangely, no such phenomenon exists in the video game world. When video games are shitty, they're just plain shitty. So imagine my surprise when I discovered the gem that is Earth Defense Force 2017, a budget-priced title for Xbox 360 and a true "B" video game - so corny and dumb and poorly produced that it transcends terrible and takes a bold step into amazing. The game's paper-thin plot is that, in the not-too-distant future, aliens have invaded earth. These aliens are (surprise!) not friendly, and are comprised of a nonsensical mish-mash of giant ants (a la the sci-fi classic Them!), giant spiders, and giant robots. They're causing wanton destruction around the world - in particular, Tokyo (surprise again! the game originated in Japan!), which is where you encounter them crawling up skyscrapers and eating civilians. As part of the Earth Defense Force, your job is to mindlessly blast the fuck out of all these giant alien creatures, taking with you many innocent lives, most of the Tokyo skyline, and every single law of physics. Yes, the game's low-budget production values shine through every pixel of the experience, from the hilariously bad voice acting ("Dang those giant ants! I'm gonna blow them to smithereens!") to the almost impressive lack of any lighting (nothing in the game casts anything that even resembles a shadow) or physics (the bodies of several-ton giant ants bounce around like popcorn). But not only does none of that matter, it all becomes vitally important to the fun - particularly when you realize you can throw a tiny grenade at a skyscraper and watch the entire thing subsequently collapse into low-polygon rubble. Delightfully uncomplicated gameplay that's basically Robotron in 3D, your only goal ever in EDF 2017 is to kill everything that moves, which you'll do with a wide variety of weapons and unlimited ammo. The bottom line is: Inside a package of endearingly poor production and cheesy "B" movie style, you get to spend hours of curiously-addicting fun attacking giant, acid-spewing insects and monstrous laser-shooting japanese robots - and for a bargain price, no less. For all that, I can't recommend this tragically overlooked game quite enough - just don't expect Gears Of War.

Handheld Game Genre Most Over-Crowded With Shitty Knock-Offs:
Nintendo DS "Pet Simulators"

There's a curious thing that happens in the world of gaming: When someone comes up with a unique idea that really takes off, a whole lot of uncreative, shameless game publishers quickly shit-out half-assed clones of the original idea, and flood the market in hopes that some idiot will confuse the cheaper, shittier clone game with its superior original. This happens most dramatically in the world of portable gaming, where the production costs are cheap, the turnaround time relatively quick, and there are a lot of young gamers with parents who barely know Silent Hill from Dora's Spelling Adventures, let alone the difference between Dogz and Nintendogs.

In 2005, Nintendo made a cute, clever series of games called Nintendogs, which used the DS's unique interface to let you raise and care for a strangely compelling virtual puppy. It was a unique and well-executed game which became very popular amongst casual gamers (read: little kids and chicks). And while they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, it's also the sincerest form of capitalism: Cheaper, shoddier "pet simulator" clones quickly emerged for the DS, and by 2007, the phenomena had grown to ghastly proportions.

Apparently there are a lot of parents out there who hate their children, because there wouldn't be a "Pet Dolphinz 2" right now if no one had bought the first one. Yes, dolphins - er, dolphinZ, because those are kewler. Raising puppies and kitties wore out its welcome pretty quickly, so now your kids can bore themselves to tears caring for low-budget virtual hamsters, horses, dolphins, and most recently, babies. I imagine the baby simulators are exactly like the pet simulators, except maybe you can't teach them tricks. I'm hoping 2008 will bring us Dung Beetle Simulator, My South American Three Toed Slothz, Brown Recluse Friends, and Care For An Invalid.

Since I have to weed through these horrendous titles every time I'm at the games store looking for something decent, I am now going to punish you with the covers of every pet simulator game I could find released for the Nintendo DS during 2007. Enjoy!

I was going to make a joke about how that last cover looks like you just walked in on some sort of bizarre kitten orgy, but someone already beat me to it.

2008 shows the pet simulator onslaught continuing at full speed. This gem, Pet Pals: Animal Doctor, hasn't come out yet (I have mine on pre-order), but its cover is an absolutely horrifying/hilarious Photoshop atrocity:

If I brought my dog into the vet and saw a creepy airbrushed Latino man stroking a rabbit and gazing longingly at my pet like he wants to whip out the peanut butter, I'd get the fuck out of there.

Actually, that guy looks kind of familiar... where have I seen him before? Oh, that's right, he's Mega Man from the original NES Mega Man (worst) box cover (ever)!

Good to see he's still getting work after all these years.

Most Irritating Devotion To Shitty Gaming Technology:
Sony And its Wiitarded Sixaxis Controller

Many years ago, I was up in Seattle reuniting with some old friends, and we were getting spectacularly drunk. We were doing tequila shots and washing them down with the only thing we had around: Mountain Dew. I know, I know - disgusting, and a lethal combination, to be sure. At that time, the now legendary Sega Dreamcast was a new and wonderful thing, and my friends hadn't played it yet, so we fired up the white wonder and started up a game of Crazy Taxi. As it turns out, drunk driving a video game taxi is both difficult and extremely hazardous. Upon watching my inebriated friends crash the virtual car into walls and swerve recklessly through crowds of polygonal pedestrians, I belligerently told them they had no idea what they were doing, and snatched the controller away so I could "show them how it's done." In fact, all I showed them was comedy gold, as I proceeded to swerve my taxi wildly back and forth across the street, crashing into almost everything. In my damaged state, the controller seemed to have a mind of its own, taunting me by doing exactly the opposite of what I thought I was telling it to do. Within a minute, the violent swerving of the video game car was reacting with the volatile tequila/Mountain Dew cocktail in my stomach, and, according to my friends, my face turned ghostly white, and I muttered meekly, "I need some fresh air," before bolting outside and spewing a fountain of green vomit all over the place. Crazy Taxi holds a special place in our hearts to this day, for being the only game ever to make me puke.

The point of that story is that many years later, the first time I tried playing a game with Sony's "Sixaxis" PS3 motion-sensing controller, I was very much sober, but I immediately felt like I was drunk driving that taxi again. The game this time was MotorStorm, a fun off-road racer which becomes hilariously unplayable with the motion controls activated. You'll swerve wildly left and right, fly off cliffs, crash into walls, and you might just want to vomit.

For those who don't know, the "Sixaxis" controller was Sony's last minute, panicked response to Nintendo's Wii. But where Wii is a platform based entirely around its unique motion-sensing controller, Sony stuck a gyroscope inside a standard PS2 controller (which makers of PC gamepads had been doing for years, to little fanfare) and tried to pass it off as something that was going to elevate the gaming experience. Exactly no one was impressed, and a year in, the result is a number of PS3-exclusive games with frustrating, awkwardly-implemented motion controls that only elevate your desire to throw the Shitaxis controller through your TV screen. The most famous of these is Lair, Factor 5's much-hyped dragon game which promised to use immersive motion controls that felt like you were actually taking control of a flying dragon (and cause millions of nerdgasms). What they didn't mention is that your dragon must have had a long night at Ye Olde Ale House, because he flies like a drunken fucking nightmare when you try to maneuver him with the mandatory Shitaxis motion controls. Both Factor 5 and Sony denied that Sony forced the developer to use motion controls exclusively, but I don't buy it - there have been far too many examples of smart first-party developers including God-awful Shitaxis controls that they would have never let out the door had Sony not been forcing the issue to prove that Shitaxis was just as good as the Wiimote.

Case in point: In the great game Ratchet & Clank Future, your characters control like a dream with the classic analog joystick, but when you reach certain parts of the game that require you to fly a glider-like device, you'll be suddenly requested to use the Shitaxis motion sensor, for no clear reason or benefit. Attempting to steer by tilting your Shitaxis will have you flailing the unresponsive controller around like an idiot, only to find your glider doing the exact opposite of what you want it to do. After dive-bombing into the abyss several times in a row and swearing loudly at your television, the game seems to apologize for the whole ordeal, and actually brings up a message asking if you'd like to try it with normal controls! Once you're offered such a privilege, the task becomes ten trillion times easier, and you'll fly like an ace.

Another example: Recently I've been playing the excellent game Uncharted, which again controls wonderfully until its maddening insistence on incorporating motion controls. The most irritating of these is that to throw a grenade, you must tilt the controller to adjust the arc of your throw. This is so unbelievably clunky, slow, and unresponsive, that in the heat of battle it makes a grenade about as helpful as a cole sore. For proof, here's a video of me, a seasoned video game veteran, trying to throw a grenade at a specific bad guy in Uncharted. Watch me pull a perfect head shot in the beginning using the analog joystick, and then enjoy my mounting frustration as I attempt to aim the motion-controlled grenade, and die over and over again because I get shot in the fucking head before I can properly aim the fucker:

You'll see the aim seem to sit in one place for seconds at a time - that's my trying to fine-tune it to land in a very specific spot - a breeze with a joystick, but subtle movements translate into exactly diddlyfuck with the Shitaxis tilt sensors. And yes, I sit at home alone, shouting profanities at my TV screen. Doesn't everyone?

When three top-notch developers cripple all or part of their games with ball-sucking control gimmicks, you know something's afoot. Sony's pressuring them to use the Shitaxis because otherwise, no one ever would. It's a clumsy hunk of fuck and you know it, Sony - now stop punishing us with your mistakes, and let's all just forget the whole thing ever happened.

Lamest Video Game Fashion Trend:
Guys In Big Futuristic Metal Combat Suits

Ever since Halo soiled the tidy whities of a generation of geeks the world over, and simultaneously soiled the wallets of Microsoft with green, video games have been shamelessly and repetitively employing big, tough, overly-militaristic characters with big guns and big futuristic metal combat suits. This type of imagery is corny, cliched, and now overdone to the point of absurdity, but it speaks so directly to the testosterone-coated hearts of dweeby, mouth-breathing teenage boys that it continues to be a guaranteed moneymaker. It's also a guaranteed girl repellant, as few things this side of World Of Warcraft help preserve the image of gaming as a private club of greasy, fap-happy fanboys who haven't come any closer to getting laid than the time they walked in on their sister using the bathroom. I'd like to believe that in 2008 everyone will be a little tired of big tough guys in big metal combat suits, but since Halo 3 was inexplicably the biggest thing since Jesus, it seems as though we're doomed to another year of offensively uncreative character design.

Best Reason To Avoid Xbox Live:
Its 10 Million Users

I wanted a funny picture here of some overzealous nerd with his Xbox Live headset strapped on, so I searched Google Images for "xbox nerd headset" and ironically, the only headset-toting doofus on the first page of results was me. Here I am lampooning how lame one feels while wearing a gaming headset, from my 2006 post making fun of Xbox Live:

Since not much has changed, I'll give you my 2006 description of the "sweaty, acne-faced know-it-alls" who populate Xbox Live: "I'm a huge fucking nerd... But I have to draw the line somewhere. I have to employ some degree of moderation in my nerdiness. The fine folks you'll be chatting with on Xbox Live know no such moderation. They are more or less the same type of pit-stained dweebs who populate internet gaming and computer forums, the anonymous stomping grounds of the opinionated loser elite where sniveling, empowered teenagers spend all day having fictional arguments with each other. It is here where you might see CovenantLord666 mocking l337CommandWarrior1984's laughably inferior knowledge of Final Fantasy chronology, to which SephirothTheAlmighty might wittingly chime in with 'H0ly sh1tz0rz j00 0wnzorzed him upz0r!1' Riveting interactions like these come to life in a whole new way when you slide on your headset and discover that, when you finally get to hear them talk, all of these sweaties manage to have the exact same voice. You know the one: that snide, nasally tone, drenched in the overconfidence that only anonymity can provide, each sentence suffixed with a breathy sneer of a chuckle that says, in no uncertain terms: 'I firmly believe that I am better than you in every way possible... so long as we're safely distanced by the internet.'"

These kids spend absurd amounts of hours memorizing maps, grunting into their headsets, and getting way better at playing games about guys in big futuristic metal combat suits than I ever could, or would ever want to. With Halo 3 making 2007 the biggest online fragfest ever, the legions of sweaties were in rare form, pumped up with Red Bull and eager to prove that while they may never touch a boob, damned if they won't have a higher Gamerscore than you. When I join an online game and get my head blown off within seconds, from a gunman I didn't even see, I can almost feel the slobbery Cheeto dust splatter against my cheek as my assassin screams "NOOOOOOB!!!" into the microphone, live from his parents' basement. The type of losers who make up the core of Xbox Live diminish its "play games with people around with world!" idealism into "get your ass handed to you by self-righteous fourteen year olds while their borderline-retarded nasally nerd banter turns your brain into mush!"

For all these reasons, I'm not much of an online gamer. But the good news is that while you may have to devote unGodly hours of your life to Xbox Live in order to be a formidable competitor, you only need a little bit of imagination to making losing fun on Xbox Live. Which brings us to...

Best Reason To Embrace Xbox Live:
Annoying The Shit Out of its 10 Million Users

Still the most fun I've had with online games since the days of dial-up, disrupting the activities of online gamers with "Xbox Live Terrorism" is the best way to turn your pitiful fragging skills into first-class entertainment. You can read some of my previous Xbox Live adventures here, but lately my weapon of choice has been taking on the personality of an aggressive, flaming gay guy. In a worryingly convincing over-the-top gay voice, I joined a game of Team Fortress the other day and ran around aimlessly, getting killed over and over again while I shouted obnoxious lispy pep-rally cheers to my teammates like "Okay boys, here we go, I'm fucking PUMPED, let's go shoot some fucking blue guys! Fuck yeah, red team is gonna kick some big blue BOOTY mofo! Are you fuckers READY?? I feel so big and masculine with my giant gun, you'd never know I was a bottom! It's all very phallic, don't you think??" It doesn't take long before one of them snarls at me to shut up, which is my invitation to get frisky: "Oooh, CrysisLord91, you're a fiesty one! You like to talk tough? You like to boss me around? Boss me around baby, I don't mind." This begets the inevitable juvenile bigotry, with irritated calls of "shut up faggot, we're trying to play a game!" My saucy gay alter-ego is unmoved, and continues to taunt them, eventually asking if any of them have had any homosexual thoughts, or tried "anal play:" "You boys all love the cock just as much as me, you just don't know it yet! Seriously boys, next time you're wanking to Hayden Panettiere Photoshopped nudes, try just sliding a finger up your little stinker. Just one - start with your pinky, if you're scared, but just try it, and then tell me I'm not onto something!" The key is to not stop talking, and to get increasingly annoying and sexually confrontational - especially when challenging their masculinity. Before long, my whole team was screaming at me furiously, telling me to "get AIDS and die, homo!" I'm not even kidding. If I could just fucking figure out a way to record audio from an Xbox Live headset, the resulting podcasts would be nothing short of epic.

Most Blatant Attempt To Cash In On Another Game System's Success:
The White PS2

If the aforementioned Sixaxis controller wasn't enough evidence of Sony's Wii envy, the company sunk to a new low last year when they redesigned the PS2 with a suspiciously familiar aesthetic. Take a look at these unaltered official product photos and see if you can figure out what they're going for:

I guess white is the new black, and with PS3 selling about as well as Bosom Buddies, The Complete Second Season Boxed Set, Sony wanted its older, cheaper, more family-friendly PS2 to hold as much appeal as possible to consumers who couldn't find the sold-out Wii. The result was the... PS...Twii? A shamelessly derivative system design, right down to the blue highlights on the box. At least the widespread rumors of a PSP redesigned with a touch screen didn't pan out... yet.

Ugliest Avatars In A Shitty Wii Game:
Carnival Games

Like pet simulators on the DS, mini-game collections have become the popular genre for developers to shit out on the Wii, trying to cash in on the success of Wii Sports. The Wii Sports model demands that each of these shitty mini-game collections allow you to customize an in-game avatar to represent yourself, and the wiser games simply use Nintendo's popular, built-in Mii avatars. Miis are cute, highly customizable, and every Wii player already uses one, so it only makes sense for games to allow people to use the silly digital versions of themselves they've already grown accustomed to, right? Well, not if you're Electronic Arts, whose lame mini-game bonanza Playground utilizes its own set of characters, which are pretty fucking shitty-looking in a "Burger King Kid's Club" sort of way. But outdoing them by far are the hideous avatar monstrosities used in Global Star Software's Carnival Games.

I was dumb enough to buy the bargain-priced, kid-friendly Carnival Games on a whim, because the lure of virtual skee ball was simply too great. Sadly, it turns out nothing can replace real skee ball, least of all a shoddy, boring game with ass-tastic motion controls. But what stood out as the shittiest, and downright weirdest element of Carnival Games was its attempt at a custom avatar system, featuring some of the most off-putting character designs I've ever seen. In trying to craft a virtual person to represent yourself from Carnival Games' palette of baggy-eyed mongoloids and clothing from the discount rack of the Salvation Army thrift store, you'll find it's near impossible to come up with anything that doesn't look straight out of an Oklahoma trailer park.

If you tell the game you're an adult male, for example, you'll find most of the options look like your creepy drunk uncle who always made you sit on his lap uncomfortably long at family gatherings:

Look at how ugly those things are! You're meant to adorn these hillbilly creatures with your own name, but the only appropriate names seem to be Jimbo, Cletus, and Billy Ray. Curiously though, your only hairstyle option is a Jewfro, so the very best-looking avatar I was able to create looked something like a pre-muscles Carrot Top after a bender:

As a woman, you'll find it difficult to escape looking like a pear-shaped country singer with a face permanently frozen in "durrrrrrr."

And the children, naturally, look like the results of fetal alcohol syndrome as styled by Willy Wonka:

I'm not sure if the developers of this game were trying to be funny when they made these, or if it's just an epic exercise in bad taste, but either way the result is so hideous and unpleasant that you'll want to stop playing the game just so you don't have to look at yourself. Next time, please just let us use our Miis.

Most Dreaded Sight For Gamers:

The infamous, much-feared Red Ring of Death, which signals the end of your Xbox 360's short life span. By some unholy miracle, this affliction has not yet befallen my two year old Xbox, though many friends have seen its cold stare, so evocative of 2001's HAL 9000 that it almost seems to say, "I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Dave."

Christ, you know, you think you come up with something witty, and then you realize not only did someone else think of it first, but they've already made a fucking t-shirt out of it. Fucking internet!

Anyway, such was the prevalence of dreaded red rings, and the resulting outcry, that Microsoft was forced to offer free repairs on any dead systems, costing the company one billion dollars. That'll teach you to rush a poorly-constructed, untested piece of junk hardware onto the market just so you can claim the first next-gen console, douchelords.

The Demonbaby Embarrassing New Low In Video Games Award For 2007:
Deal Or No Deal for Nintendo DS

Deal Or No Deal is a television game show of stunning banality - and while banality is nothing new to television, the overwhelming popularity of Deal is what makes it particularly tragic and offensive. This is a game show that asks absolutely nothing of its participants, short of trying to win money by randomly choosing boxes held by attractive women. It asks far less of its millions of viewers, who sit zombified watching passively as complete strangers try to win money by randomly choosing boxes held by attractive women. At least other game shows ask trivia questions, allowing the home viewer to participate (in a decidedly non-participatory manner) by trying to answer them. Here, there is profoundly, magnificently nothing: No interactivity, no thought, no creativity - just an hour of your life spent utterly idle, while your brain silently rots away. So when I repeatedly saw the show's portable video game adaptation mentioned across the internet as a true abomination of gaming, of course I had to check it out.

As you can imagine, I find it deplorable that anyone would want to play a game based on this vapid show. If any enjoyment is to be found in the television version, I imagine it has something to do with the personalities of the host and contestants, or at least hot chicks holding briefcases. But none of that is present in Deal Or No Deal for Nintendo DS, save in the most primitive of pixelized recreations. In fact, if Deal's chrome-domed host Howie Mandell is ugly in real life, his low-resolution polygonal counterpart is downright terrifying. Sometimes he looks like a villain from a James Bond movie, holding his sausage fingers together sadistically as he awaits your demise:

Other times, he looks more like gay German fashion designer:

In either situation, he's the only entertaining aspect of this miserable game, which simply asks you to tap randomly on boxes, and see what number is inside. It's a slow, monotonous process, which awards you only repetitive soundbytes of Howie Mandell reminding you that lots of money is good and not a lot of money is bad. There is of course no money to win - and no challenge to be had, and no achievement to be felt. Just dumb, dumb luck. Or, it should be dumb luck, but as this gloriously hate-filled review of the game warned me, you can actually guess exactly which case has the million dollars, because the game doesn't properly randomize the contents! You have a game involving zero skill, and zero gameplay, requiring nothing more than simple guesswork, and the developers of this suck-fest even managed to fuck that up! It's an impressive achievement in failing at the most basic task of game development: To make a retardedly simple guessing game based on a retardedly simple guessing TV show. This game is mind-numbing, pointless, and broken, and a no-brainer for the Demonbaby Embarrassing New Low in Video Games award for 2007. If this game holds any appeal for you, I might suggest a more fun and productive game: It's called cut your wrists with a very sharp knife and see how long you can remain conscious.

Movies, TV, and DVDs

2008-01-07T05:53:00.000-08:00

2007 wasn't a bad year for movies, but it wasn't exactly a good one. For every excellent movie there were at least ten awful ones, which is why most of the awards here are for the shittiest movies of the year - which works out for me, those are more fun to write. It was a pretty great year for television, but TV is so shitty by default that if even one percent of its total programming is excellent, it was a good year. You can find my full list of picks for TV and DVDs in the 2007 Favorites section. And of course, share your favorites in the comments. Now, the awards...

The It's About Fucking Time Award for DVD Re-Releases:
Blade Runner and Twin Peaks

Blade Runner is one of my favorite films of all time - a modern noir masterpiece and one of the most gorgeous-looking films ever made; so it was a particular travesty that the only DVD version of the film available was marred with dust and scratches, a horrendous encoding job, two-channel surround, and zero extras. It took longer than it should have, but the crimes of that awful DVD have been rectified with a fantastic five-disc set of the film's new "final cut." And it's even out in high-def on both HD DVD and Blu-ray - I have the HD DVD version and it looks and sounds absolutely incredible.

David Lynch's wonderfully weird Twin Peaks is one of the best things that's ever happened to television. I was only ten years old when the show premiered, but I watched the pilot episode and loved it, and became a devout pre-pubescent Twin Peaks fanatic. That probably says quite a lot about me, actually. Tragically, the show's DVD releases have been an absolute mess, with the first season DVD set lacking the crucial two hour pilot episode due to some weird rights issues. The only way to get the pilot on DVD was to order a sketchy import copy (which I did) and even then the quality was shit. Thankfully, everything seems to have been worked out and the entire series was finally released last year in its entirety as one "Definitive Gold Box" DVD set. If you like David Lynch, or anything strange and avant-garde, this is mandatory viewing. Sure, it gets a little messy at the end, but television has yet to produce anything as unique as this legendary show. Besides, it has creepy midgets, David Duchovny in drag, and a woman who talks to her pet log - how can you go wrong?

Best TV Show With a Ridiculous Premise That Somehow Works:
Dexter

Dexter is a dramedy about a forensics investigator for the Miami Police homicide department who's secretly a serial killer. Oh, but he only murders bad guys. And chops them up into pieces. Sounds terrible, doesn't it? Like a bad SNL skit. A bad recent SNL skit. Hell, maybe even a bad Mad TV skit. Anyway, the surprise is that somehow Dexter defies the odds and not only works but is immensely enjoyable, thanks to its careful balance between darkness and humor, but mostly thanks to how perfect Michael C Hall is as an emotionless but genuinely likable misfit who spends so much time pretending to be someone else that he starts to lose track of who he really is. 2007 was Dexter's second season, and it managed in many ways to surpass its fantastic first. If you've been yearning for a Patrick Bateman with a heart of gold, pick up the first season on DVD and enjoy.

Best Evidence That Against All Odds, Matt Damon Is A Badass:
The Bourne Ultimatum

James Bond. Dirty Harry. Jack Bauer. ...Matt Damon? Amazingly, yes. The Bourne movies are the coolest, smartest, darkest, most stylish action films in decades. The 2007 trilogy capper Ultimatum in particular is unapologetically un-Hollywood: There are no one-liners, no cheap romances, no CGI action sequences, no comic relief... In fact, by this third chapter, the series has gotten so bleak that I'm pretty sure there's not one single smile throughout the entire movie. Most importantly though, Matt Damon is a total badass, joining the aforementioned short list of impossibly cool Hollywood tough guys. If the words "Matt Damon" and "action movie" have understandably kept you from seeing these great films, you're really missing out.

Best Reason To Get an HDTV:
Planet Earth

See that picture? That's a giant fucking shark, leaping out of the water in super high frame rate slow motion, snatching a seal into its deadly jaws and ending an amazing battle that comprises one of Planet Earth's many highlights... Although to be fair, it's nothing compared to this epic shark battle.

BBC's magnificent nature series has garnered so much praise over the past year that it's almost pointless for me to bring it up here, but it's so good that if even one person reading this hasn't seen it yet and does so because of me, then it's all worth it. For the uninitiated, Planet Earth is an 11-part series, with each episode focusing on a different aspect of the planet. It's fascinating, well-narrated, and weaves in a subtle but important message about the impact our species has had on the earth - but the real star here is the cinematography. Without a doubt the most spectacular nature photography ever captured, Planet Earth will make your jaw sore from dropping so frequently. Everything was filmed with incredible high-def cameras, so this is a release that is great on DVD, but is utterly fucking spectacular on HD DVD or Blu-ray. You really haven't seen it until you've seen it in high-def. It's become the default show-off piece for my HD setup, and should be the first thing you pop in to make yourself feel better about all the money you spent on a new TV, a high-def player, HDMI cables, a receiver, etc. A remarkable achievement in documentary filmmaking, and if its quality is ever surpassed, it will doubtlessly be by the same group of talented filmmakers.

Funniest TV Show Nobody Watches:
30 Rock

A network comedy about a network comedy is, on paper, about as appealing to me as having my scrotum nailed to a wooden plank, but 30 Rock - about the antics behind the scenes of an SNL-type show - is one of the funniest things I've seen on TV in a long time. It won an Emmy for best comedy, but it only has about six viewers total. If you haven't seen it, give this show a chance, it has a great ensemble cast and some of the smartest writing this side of The Office. As much as it revels in absurdity, it's the little subtle moments that make 30 Rock genius, and if you don't catch them, chances are you aren't smart enough to get them. You wouldn't think it, but Alec Baldwin is fucking hilarious, by the way. The first season is out now on DVD, and the second season, which got even better, wraps up this month.

Best Interactive Movie:
Control

I call Control an interactive movie because it's so bleak and horrendously depressing that you want to participate in Ian Curtis's suicide at the film's end (if that was a spoiler, you're probably not someone who should see this movie anyway). Don't get me wrong - Control is a great movie, filmed beautifully and acted brilliantly - but don't make the mistake of inaugurating a fun Friday night with it, as I did. I and the friends I saw it with came out of the theatre ready to take up heroin, we were so bummed out. It's a strange and subtly brilliant film because during the first half, you find yourself thinking that maybe Ian Curtis was just a whiny teenager with the same inane problems as everyone else. Oh, he got married too young and got in a rock band and wanted some vajayjay on the side and it screwed up his life, boo the fuck hoo. It felt like it was stripping away the mystique behind someone as legendarily tortured as Curtis. And then, somehow, the film - and Sam Riley's fantastic performance - pulls you into his despair, and it doesn't matter anymore what the reasons for it were, just that it was insurmountably oppressive. And Christ, you really feel it, and eventually you can't wait for him to just fucking off himself and end the fucking misery already. If you have a history of emotional instability, put the suicide help line on speed dial before sitting down for this feel-good popcorn flick.

Coolest Marketing For A Movie Not Coming Our For Like A Billion Years:
The Dark Knight

Great teaser images, drool-worthy trailers, and strange alternate reality games (from the wizards at 42 Entertainment) promoting the incredible-looking Dark Knight movie have been swirling around for what seems like forever, despite the film still being another six months away. But I don't really have much to say about all that, I just wanted an excuse to post this genius mash-up of the audio from the Dark Knight trailer and video from the so-bad-it's-awesome 1966 Batman movie (thanks Rumas):

The Blueballs Award For Most Frustrating TV Show:
Lost

Lost... Oh, Lost. The first season of Lost was nothing short of spectacular. It was was so well-made, so well-written, so filled with weirdness and excitement and mystique, and you got this feeling that every little thing, every tiny detail of the show, had been meticulously planned out, and it was all leading up to some epic secret that would blow your fucking mind with how ingeniously it tied everything together. It was so good that it seemed almost too good to be true... And it was. In the show's second season, things started to get kind of weird. Like, the bad kind of weird. Asking a lot more questions but never giving any answers, you couldn't help but feel like the writers were stalling for time. Like maybe they'd planned a story that was two seasons long, and the show's unexpected success forced them to drag it out longer than they'd intended. Or worse yet, maybe they'd been making everything up as they went along. By the third season, watching Lost was like being on a date with a hot girl you've been seeing for a little while who acts like she's going to put out, but keeps resisting your advances. Through the whole thing you're sitting there with your hand on her knee watching some shitty movie on her couch, getting more and more frustrated by her lack of interest in taking her clothes off, and just when you're about to give up on it altogether, at the last minute she pulls you into a passionate five minute make out session, lets you kind of feel a tit for a second, and then abruptly says she has to get to sleep and sends you on your way, and suddenly all you can think about is the next date. Lost's third season had so many maddening low points - so many bang-your-head-against-the-wall moments of frustration and stupidity, that I wasn't going to come back for season four. I was totally over it. And then the glorious tease of a season finale came out of nowhere with all of the smart energy and intriguing story that had attracted me in the first place, and it let me feel just enough of its proverbial tit of secrets that dammit, I was hooked again. Seriously though, season four had really better put out, or I'm done for real this time, and I'll stick with fast, easy girls like 24.

Worst Vocal Performance By Two Non-Singers Miscast In A Musical:
Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter - Sweeney Todd

Dear Tim Burton,

I know you're married to Helena Bonham Carter, and I know you have a curious hard-on for Johnny Depp. That's all well and good, and they're fine actors, really. But maybe - and this is just a thought - maybe next time you make a musical about British people singing, you might want to find some British people who can actually sing. As crazy as it sounds, there are other actors out there.

Thanks and maybe try combing your hair occasionally,

Rob

P.S. I hate musicals - I fucking haaaaate musicals. So if I'm going to watch one, I'd better hear some fucking good singing, and Johnny Depp and especially Helena Bonham Carter are fucking terrible singers. Everyone walked out of that movie thinking "You know, Johnny Depp wasn't that bad of a singer!" It's a fucking musical, dipshits, it should have been great singing, not shitty singing that's passable because it's coming out of a beloved celebrity. And remember, that's after the vocals had been processed with the very best tuning software, like the same kind Britney Spears uses on everything she sings so as to not sound like a dying cow - so you can only imagine what the raw recordings sounded like. Eh, maybe I'm just still bitter about the nightmare that was Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. Oh, and Planet Of The Apes. And The Corpse Bride. Sorry, it was boring, and you know it.

Most Horrendously Over-Written Dialogue In A Critically Acclaimed Movie:
Juno

I know Juno is 2007's token indie darling, and despite genuinely wanting to like it, I thought it was staggeringly mediocre. Ellen Paige is a fantastic and adorable actress, and the movie has a sweet story and some nice moments, but its much-talked-about script - written by an ex-stripper/current blogger - is so retardedly over-written that it ruins the film. Juno's character speaks in an awkward combination of grammar too complex and witty for even the smartest sixteen year old, and invented slang words too idiotic for any sixteen year old. I was watching the movie thinking how it sounded like someone in their late '20's trying to write witty dialogue for teenagers, before I knew that it was in fact someone in their late '20's trying to write witty dialogue for teenagers. Juno's script, which is for some reason available online, is so nauseatingly hip that it even specifies which posters from the "Big Book Of Hipster Credibility" should be on Juno's bedroom wall: specifically The Damned, The Germs, The Stooges, Television, and Richard Hell. There is, however, nothing hip about the phrase "honest-to-blog," which is one of many verbal offenses that drag the movie down.

As a side note, I should probably have a separate award for the terrible fucking sing-song folk music that beleaguers the entire film and adds to its exhausting "look how indie we are" clamor for credibility. God damn I hate the Moldy fucking Peaches.

Worst Performance By A Playstation Character In A Big-Budget Hollywood Movie:
The vampire people in I Am Legend

I look forward to the day when computer graphics look truly photorealistic all of the time, but that day is not today, and lazy filmmakers need to understand that. We've been suffering for years now with terrible, unrealistic effects that may be flashier and more versatile than the rubber masks and stop-motion animation of the past, but are less convincing because there's nothing physical there, and you can tell. It's understandable to use CGI when dinosaurs need to run around, but did the infected vampire people in I Am Legend really need to look like shitty video game characters? Certainly actors wearing make-up would have been a thousand times creepier and more convincing. The laughable results of the CGI close-ups sucked the fear and tension right out of an otherwise decent movie.

Most Ironic/Tragic Movie Merchandise Item:
Brawndo Energy Drink

I've sung the praises of Mike Judge's criminally unseen film Idiocracy many times, so I'll spare you another round for now. 2007 saw the film's DVD release, but it also saw one of the most bizarre and sadly fitting posthumous merchandise tie-ins in movie history.

Idiocracy is set 500 years in the future, where Americans have continued to be dumbed down to the point of retardation. They watch a reality TV show about a guy being kicked repeatedly in the balls, and they've replaced water entirely with a sports drink called Brawndo: The Thirst Mutilator, because the ads tell them "it's got electrolytes!" Nevermind that nobody knows what electrolytes even are. And yes, I'm still talking about a fictional future, but if you got confused for a second, that was part of the subtle genius of Judge's film: Its many satirical examples of a society dumbed down by pop culture and ad culture felt like a prediction for five years in the future, not five hundred. The epic and tragic irony, then, was that 21st Century Fox all but buried Idiocracy because test audiences "didn't get it." They are now, however, more than happy to put their money behind an actual energy drink named Brawndo: The Thirst Mutilator, turning a joke about the stupidity of Americans into an opportunity to profit off of the stupidity of Americans. Obviously if you've seen the movie, you'll get the joke, and you'll laugh at Brawndo's "it's got electrolytes!" slogan and masculotard advertising, and you might view Brawndo as a clever marketing gimmick for the year-old Idiocracy DVD, despite the fact that it's barely mentioned on the product's website. But that's ignoring the bigger picture, because if you're part of the 99.9 percent of the American population who hasn't seen the movie, Brawndo is just another legitimate beverage product, and its slogan is not a joke, but a selling point. It's a case of life profiting off of life imitating art imitating life that's so ridiculous it's hard to adequately process.

The Life Aquatic Award For Cinematic Pretension:
Grindhouse

There are precious few movies that I've actually walked out of. It takes a rare combination of impatience on my part and pretentiousness on the film's part to combine in a way that makes me realize I'm not going to suddenly start liking this movie, and my life would be better if I just left. That happened with The Life Aquatic, and I don't have the energy right now to argue with the legion of misguided hipsters who swear to that movie, but for me it represented a spectacular swan dive over the line of "quirky for the sake of being quirky" that Wes Anderson had been walking so carefully with his previous films. For that reason, I refused to see The Darjeeling Limited, as it appeared to be a continuation of that same grotesque aesthetic (I'll admit that I did download Anderson's free short film prequel to Darjeeling, only because Natalie Portman got naked in it. And yes, he even made that boring).

Anyway, the one film I walked out of this year was Grindhouse, the Rodriguez/Tarantino double feature that I was actually really excited about. However, about forty five minutes into Rodriquez's film Planet Terror, I realized two things: First, that the kitschy concept of recreating bad 70's exploitation films had worked a little too well, and now I was just watching a bad movie - which might be entertaining in the background on Cinemax on a Sunday afternoon, but not as a Friday night feature. And secondly, I realized that I was halfway through the first of two bad movies, it was already 10:00, and I had better things to do on a Friday night than sit through three and a half hours of good directors playing dress-up with '70's film stock. It felt like one of those painful Saturday Night Live skits that starts out funny and then seems to drag on way too long after it's beaten the joke to death. And that was the end of that. Goodbye, Grindhouse. I never did see Tarentino's half of the experiment, but I heard from friends who braved the whole ordeal that it made Planet Terror look like a masterpiece. The film was such a box office disaster that it was reformatted as two separate movies for overseas and DVD releases. Sometimes funny ideas are better left on paper, guys.

Most Insultingly Vapid New Game Show:
Temptation

With the epic stupidity that is Deal Or No Deal continuing to be an unequivocal success in America, inane game shows are already a depressing example of what qualifies as entertainment to the drooling masses. The other day I accidentally caught a bit of a new show that I think ups the ante: Temptation. I am appalled at how retarded this show is. Equal parts consumerist orgy and celebration of low-brow pop culture, Temptation "tempts" its contestants with products they can exchange for points earned by answering trivia questions that would seem to reward whoever has numbed their brain with the most hours of E! and VH1. The show adds an infomercial twist by "tempting" viewers with "incredible deals" on featured products, which you can call in and order via 1-800 numbers, or on its website seenontemptation.com. You can feel yourself getting stupider as you witness the whole affair - but I'll let it speak for itself:

For the worst of two worlds, here is a selection of mongoloid American Idol contestants duking it out on a special "celebrity" edition of the show.

The Rob Schneider Please, Please, Please Stop Acting Award:
Jamie Kennedy & Eddie Murphy

Eddie Murphy used to be really funny. Jamie Kennedy has never once, even for a second, been funny. Both of them are responsible for two of the worst movies of 2007: Norbit and Kickin' It Old School, respectively. Now, mind you, I haven't exactly seen either of these movies in their entirety, but why would I have? If you can't tell from the trailers alone that these are insulting abominations of celluloid, then you should probably think about killing yourself. Beyond that, the respective three percent and nine percent ratings awarded on Rotten Tomatoes by the brave movie critics who have to see these movies should give you a pretty good indication of the quality of film you're dealing with. Still, I'm not one to just listen to what everyone else is saying, so I found some devoted Youtube nerds with worryingly poor taste who took some time off from never getting laid to assemble the highlights of both of these films into easier-but-still-difficult to watch clips. First up is Norbit, a movie so insulting and embarrassing I almost don't want to talk about it at all, lest I contribute to any collective memory of its existence whatsoever. And if you think this five minute summary is painful, imagine watching the entire 90 minute movie:

Yes, that astoundingly racist Japanese caricature at the beginning is in fact Eddie Murphy, desperate to repeat his Dr. Doolittle character actor success. Mr. Murphy, it's time to stop. Please, please just stop, before you leave any more skid marks on your once respectable career.

As for Jamie Kennedy, whose entire career is a skid mark, he must have discovered an extra inch left below the bar he lowered when he made Malibu's Most Wanted, and figured he could squeeze another wet turd of a movie in there. Here is one very lonely YouTube user's compilation of the apparent funniest moments from said wet turd:

I was so offended that an actual person could find this movie funny enough to compile these clips (Jamie Kennedy has posted his own clip of the film here, and it's no less painful), that I was going to post a video response with my picks for the funniest moments in Kickin' It Old School, but YouTube wouldn't let me upload nothing.

Anyway, apparently undeterred by Kickin' It Old School's massive commercial and critical failure, Mr. Kennedy has insisted on continuing to take on new film roles. His upcoming offenses against good taste include Extreme Movie and Spring Break '83, in which he plays a character named "Ballzack." The latter is apparently still filming, so if any aspiring young snipers out there are reading this, you might still be able to assassinate him in time to halt the movie's production.

The Uwe Boll Please, Please, Please Stop Making Movies Award:
Joel Schumacher and Michael Bay

If you look at Joel Schumacher's list of directorial credits, you'll see that he's made mostly mediocre, forgettable films. He's even made one film I think is great, the classic urban angst movie Falling Down. But like a light house warning you of danger, there is one big, glaring beacon of horror on his resume, and its name is Batman. Specifically, the ridiculously campy Batman Forever and its infinitely more offensive follow-up, Batman & Robin. The latter is one of the worst movies ever made, ever, largely because it misinterprets an iconic character on such an epic scale. Yes, this is the man who took Tim Burton's dark, quirky Batman and replaced him with a corny, colorful throwback to the closeted, spandexed, cartoon heroics of the 1960's TV show - and for that, I could never forgive him, even if he were to make the next Citizen Kane. Thankfully, that's not going to happen, as his contribution to 2007 proved to be one of its undisputed lowlights: The Number 23. . Yep, that movie with Jim Carrey in an unlikely role as a troubled psychopath. I think Jim Carrey's a great actor, with a lot more range than he's given credit for, but no one could have pulled a winning performance out of the stink that is that movie's script, especially with Shitmacher at the helm. But you can't exactly pity Carry - he was part of the Batman Forever trainwreck, so he should have known better than to hop aboard the Shitmacher Express again. The only good thing about The Number 23 is the ammo it provides me for my long-running argument that Schitmacher belongs in the top tier of terrible film directors, and should never be allowed to work ever again.

Next up is Michael Bay, who brought us the bloated, over-the-top computer-generated epic Transformers. Now, a lot of people - even amongst the discerning hardcore nerd crowd - really liked Transformers. They thought it was fun and exciting and about the best anyone could do with material as inherently ridiculous as warring alien robots who disguise themselves as automobiles. And maybe it was, but that doesn't excuse how terrible of a movie it was. If you think I'm crazy, I'm guessing you've only seen Transformers once. In the theatres, probably. It was fun, huh? I know, I was there. I was there opening night. I saw it in one of my all-time favorite theatres, Seattle's gorgeously-remodeled Cinerama, with my two favorite people in the world and a packed house of excited nerds who laughed and cheered throughout, and damned if I didn't have a great time. It was retarded, and over-the-top to the point of absurdity, but that was what made it fun. It was so ridiculous that it was awesome, and the sensory overload of giant robots, huge explosions, hot girls, fast cars, and dumb one-liners was an absolute blast.

Then, I saw Transformers again. I saw it months later, in an empty theatre on a rainy Sunday afternoon in some boring town in England, on account of having nothing else to do with a couple friends who hadn't seen it yet. The second viewing was nothing short of painful. Free of the excitement of opening night, I was forced to actually watch the movie as a movie, and realize it was fucking awful in a way that only the tasteless, bloated ego of Michael Bay could achieve. The script was so completely God-awful... Every single shot had to be stupidly dramatic - always a crane shot, turning or zooming around its subject... There was apparently no editor, because scene after scene dragged on to uncomfortable lengths... And suddenly, the painful memories of Pearl Harbor and Armageddon and all the other suffering I'd endured over the years at the hands of Mr. Bay came rushing back, and I was renewed with fresh hatred for his awful, awful movies and his stupid, stupid face. If you've only seen Transformers once and you enjoyed it, I urge you to never see it again, lest you be beaten down with a painful dose of reality. By making Transformers, Michael Bay has joined Schumacher, Brett Ratner, and Uwe Boll in my elite group of directors who have ruined perfectly good properties with terrible films.

Worst Movie Of The Year That's Obviously A Terrible Movie:
Epic Movie

I'd like to say that there's no form of comedy lower than the movie parody genre, but then I remember that Mel Brooks and Leslie Nielsen did it pretty well in their day. In recent years, however, the moderate success of Scary Movie has paved the way for a slew of parody films which get worse and worse with each entry. 2007's embarrassing contribution is Epic Movie, a film so shitty that it needs to be acknowledged, but so shitty that it's barely worth mentioning. This is a movie that brings no joy with its shittiness. It's not so bad it's good, it's not bad in a way that pisses you off or makes you cringe or laugh... it's just.... bad. It's a movie that seems to think that by simply referencing better movies, it will be funny - nevermind that the parodies, if you can call them that, are devoid of any humor whatsoever. And with an impressive Tomatometer rating of two percent, you can be assured I'm not the only one who feels this way. But if you still need proof, here are the losers of YouTube once again bringing you the "best" moments of this disgusting waste of a film - skip ahead to the "pirate rap" if you feel like instantly losing a few IQ points:

Sadly, the retards of America awarded this film with $40 million at the box office, and another $25 million in video rentals, so it's likely you won't see the end of this ghastly series for a long time. In fact, 2008 will bring us Extreme Movie, apparently making fun of teen sex comedies. It's not helmed by the same auteurs who made Epic Movie, but it does have Jamie Kennedy in it, so I can promise you it will suck unprecedented amounts of balls.

Worst Movie Of The Year That Should Have Known Better:
Spider-Man 3

I grew up on Spider-Man comics, so I was pleasantly surprised when Sam Raimi adapted the series with style and care in the first Spider-Man movie. For anyone who complained that it was too light and colorful and corny, go back and read the comics - Spider-Man had the goofiest dialogue of any superhero comic, and even his darkest adventures were PG fare. The film captured that dorky essence wonderfully without ever dragging it into Batman & Robin camp territory, so it felt a bit awkward when the whole middle part of Spider-Man 2 bogged down with Peter Parker's internal misery. Still, a couple great action scenes with a wonderfully-realized Doctor Octopus pretty much made up for it, and it was a decent sequel. In Spider-Man 3, however, Spidey's emo angst was overwhelming - dreadfully boring and downright embarrassing. Spidey 3 is a movie that has to stew for a while before you're ready to accept just how much it sucked. Instead of trying to convey my feelings again, I'll just quote myself from six months ago: "Spider-Man 3 sucked a wet slimy ballsack. Walking out of the cinema my initial reaction was 'eh, that was pretty mediocre,' but the more I thought about it, the more I realized what a steaming turd of disappointment it actually was. Thanks to Peter Parker's whiney emo doucheness, I had to spend ninety percent of the movie looking at giant, horrifying close-ups of Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst's weird shitty faces contorted and crying (it's not just me - they are getting strangely uglier, right?), and the other ten percent lamenting how the coolest Spidey villain of all time now has the face and voice of the dweeb from That '70's Show." Indeed, Spidey 3 is an absolute mess, but its biggest crime is the potential ruined in Raimi's under-developed, underwhelming incarnation of Venom. Raimi's mistake is obsessively focusing on Parker's personal life as the character's primary conflict, which never convinces us that Spidey is battling any threats more serious than retarded relationship drama. In the next movie, how about letting Spider-Man save the city for a change, instead of just his whiny, lipless girlfriend?

Just for the memories, here's Spidey 3's most cringe-inducing scene:

The Demonbaby Embarrassing New Low In Movies Award For 2007:
Bratz: The Movie

Bad parents around the world have allowed the revolting Bratz dolls to become hugely successful amongst young girls, despite the fact that the slutty dolls encourage the very worst of what any impressionable little girl could aspire to be: A brainless, bitchy, materialistic whore. So the toy line's expansion into a well-promoted movie was particularly disheartening, and although I obviously didn't see it, I can safely give it this award based on what it represents, and the potential damage it can do to an entire generation of young people. I'll let some of the poor souls who did see the movie weigh in on it: "An excruciatingly inane high-school comedy inspired by a line of sexually suggestive dolls aimed at 9-year-olds." "For all its blather about 'letting your spirit soar,' it's really about furthering an MTV-defined version of cool, which means too many clothes, too little education, and too much money." "Shrill and shallow to putrid extremes... one of the most blatantly offensive movies ever to be aimed at young audiences."

The real message here is that parents - the ones ultimately responsible for letting their kids be exposed to this kind of filth - need to understand the abhorrent, artificial culture that's being peddled to their daughters. I'll once again quote myself, from a 2006 rant about Bratz dolls: "It's basically warming [little girls] up to start watching MTV and have their morals and intelligence beaten to a bloody pulp by the mindless, abhorrent filth MTV shoves down the throats of impressionable 14 year olds. The bottom line is that if you are a parent and you buy 'bling bling' dolls for your little girl, you're a fucking shitty parent. There is not one single thing about these toys that even remotely on any level encourages intelligence or creativity. All it does is provide kids with a very tangible goal of growing up to be vacant, shitty, wastes of oxygen." And all the same, I'm confident, can be said for the movie.