Will Grand Theft Auto 4 Hurt Iron Man’s Box Office?

Posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 3:04 am by: Peter Sciretta

Will Grand Theft Auto 4 Hurt Iron Man’s Box Office? This is a question I’ve been thinking about for a while now. When I wrote the post Rant: Sorry Mario, Video Games Will NEVER Overtake Movies last month, I intended to include a section on how a video game release could never negatively effect the release of a theatrical movie. But to be honest with you: I did the math, and the math scared me. Here is my initial thought process:

Grand Theft Auto 4 is projected to make $350-$400+ million in it’s first week of release.

This means that 5 to 6 million copies of the game will be sold.

Polls have shown that the same audience/demographic for video games is also the same for seeing movies in the theater.

If each of those 6 million people chose to play GTA over seeing Iron Man on the big screen, that would be a $41 million hit to Paramount’s opening weekend (I came to this number using BOM’s average movie ticket price of $6.82, which might even be lower than reality)

At first glance, this doesn’t sound good.

BUT the question is: How many GTA4 gamers will choose not to buy a ticket to Iron Man either due to either available time (too busy playing the game) or available money (spent their entire entertainment allowance on the game)?

The more and more I really thought about this question, and the more and more people I was able to talk to about the issue has me solidified my belief that…

a video game purchase is not enough to keep the kids out of the movie theater.

If a movie ticket cost more than $7-$10 (let’s say $60) then maybe consumers would be forced to choose. But right now the price of a movie ticket is not enough to warrant a money spending decision. And most of the target audience (under 30-year old men) understand the concept of the on demand society, and are completely willing to save their game, go to a movie, and come back to play another day. After all, we all need a break (with exception of those nuts playing WOW who pee in cups because they can’t leave the computer for one minute to go to the bathroom).

But now industry analysts are predicting upwards of $100+M for Iron Man’s opening, and if the numbers don’t reach that high the mainstream media might connect the dots that might not even exist (because that’s what mainstream media sometimes does).

In Bell Case, Black New Yorkers See Nuances That Temper Rage

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By MANNY FERNANDEZ

Published: April 27, 2008

There was anger on the streets of Jamaica, Queens, where Sean Bell was killed in a hail of 50 police bullets in 2006 — both before and after a judge on Friday acquitted three detectives who had been charged in the shooting. But many black men and women in Jamaica and elsewhere in New York said their anger was tempered by the complicated case that unfolded in a city less racially divided than 10 years ago.

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Jacob Silberberg for The New York Times

Sheener Bailey recited a poem on Friday that she wrote about the death of Sean Bell on the street where he was killed.

Multimedia

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Inside the Sean Bell Case

Related

Bell’s Family and Friends, With Rising Anger, Say Fight Is ‘Far From Over’ (April 27, 2008)

Witnesses May Have Been Flawed, but Prosecutor Played Hand He Was Dealt (April 27, 2008)

Judge Acquits Detectives in 50-Shot Killing of Bell (April 26, 2008)

Times Topics: Sean Bell

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Jacob Silberberg for The New York Times

Elliott Clark of St. Albans, Queens, said he disagreed with the judge’s verdict, but felt more resigned than angry about it.

In Harlem, Willie Rainey, 60, a Vietnam veteran and retired airport worker, said that he believed the detectives should have been found guilty, but that he saw the case through a prism not of race, but of police conduct. “It’s a lack of police training,” Mr. Rainey said. “It’s not about race when you have black killing black. We overplay the black card as an issue.”

Even near Liverpool Street and 94th Avenue in Jamaica, the very spot where Mr. Bell was killed, Kenneth Outlaw stood and spoke not only of the humanity of Mr. Bell but of the police as well. “A cop is a human being just like anyone else,” said Mr. Outlaw, 52. “If I had to be out here, facing the same dangers the cops face, I’d be scared to death too.”

New York controversies have a way of playing out along racial lines in a city that is diverse but often seems stratified. When Amadou Diallo, an unarmed West African immigrant, was killed by the police in a blast of 41 shots in the doorway of a Bronx apartment building in 1999, his death became shorthand for excessive police force against minorities.

Yet in the aftermath of the verdict in the Bell case, many black New Yorkers reacted not with outrage but with a muted reserve, saying that the city felt like a less polarized place in 2008, nearly a decade after the Diallo shooting and with a different mayor and police commissioner. Some also said that after a seven-week trial, the picture of what happened the night Mr. Bell, a black man, was killed was still murky, and so they left the public outcry to a relatively small group of black activists who had been closely monitoring the case.

There were those, however, who spoke of losing faith and trust in both law enforcement and the judicial system, and who saw the Bell case as a vivid example of how little has changed. “How many shots have to be fired for things to change?” asked Torell Marsalis, 35, of South Jamaica.

The verdict set off visible outrage. There were scuffles outside the Queens Criminal Court building, a few marches and rallies in Queens on Friday night, and later, angry denunciations among some black activists, including the Rev. Al Sharpton. But elsewhere, the reaction was more nuanced, even subdued.

Among the dozens of black men and women interviewed in recent days, many said they sympathized with Mr. Bell’s family, but also with police officers who must make life-and-death decisions in tense, uncertain moments.

Ayana Fobbs, 27, a pharmacy worker who lives in Jamaica, a few blocks from the Community Church of Christ, where Mr. Bell’s funeral was held, said she could identify with people on both sides of the Bell shooting. One of her cousins was killed by the police in a shooting in the Bronx in the early 1990s, she said, but she also had close friends who were police officers.

“I’m just concerned about what kind of message it’s going to send on both sides,” Ms. Fobbs said on Saturday. “The community here is going to feel like anybody is fair game, if something like this could happen to an unarmed man and nobody was held accountable. And then, with the officers, it sends a message to them that they can do these types of things and get away with it.”

Others said that had they been on a jury during the trial, they would have found the officers not guilty based on what they felt was the flawed case prosecutors put forward. Still others said that they did not know what to think, after weeks of following contradictory testimony in the news. “If I was the judge, I wouldn’t know what to do,” Paul Randall, 22, a college student, said on Thursday. “From following the case, it’s kind of hard to say one way or the other.”

Some of this uncertainty and ambivalence was on display on Liverpool Street immediately after Justice Arthur J. Cooperman found the three detectives not guilty of all the charges against them. One hour after the verdict, no crowd had gathered at the tattered memorial to Mr. Bell. Someone had placed a blue votive candle on the sidewalk, and there was one old, brittle bouquet of flowers and one fresh one. The water-cooler jug someone had placed there for donations contained just a few bills.

A man who approached was not there to protest the verdict. He was only walking by, on his way to pay a parking ticket around the corner. The man, Elliott Clark, 54, had seen the news of the judge’s decision on television, and though he disagreed with the verdict, he was more resigned than outraged. This was not 2000, when Rudolph W. Giuliani was mayor and Howard Safir was police commissioner and the four officers indicted in the killing of Mr. Diallo were acquitted, he said.

Zuma Dog.

It's On.

Yes.

GTA IV - Our Impressions

What non-press, true-blooded gamers thought of the game.

Seeing as we don't want to give away too much about the game – it really is an experience that should be experienced first-hand, and not through text or some shoddy video clip – we've chosen to simply outline some of our impressions of the game:

• The controls take a few hours to get used to, but we certainly encountered no major issues.
• The first two or three missions are relatively easy, so these missions can be used to familiarize yourself with the controls.
• One of the main differences in GTA IV compared to previous GTAs is the car handling. It's less sensitive than we're used to, and far more realistic. (Turning corners is tough.)
• Euphoria is amazing, allowing you to do all sorts of crazy things.
• Cars are much more resilient now. It takes a while to get them to catch fire, and takes then even longer to blow up.
• The screenshots we've seen are accurate; explosions are insanely intense.
• Everything is more realistic; things that you never noticed in previous GTA's will now be apparent.
• The city looks good during the day, but even better at night.
• Bob Ross may have inspired the art direction (hah)! Certain visuals mimic his work, although the "Bob Ross Filter" isn't as apparent on the PS3 version.

Multiplayer also brought on it's fair share of crazy incidences – buses have a use now, by the way – and nothing says "mayhem" like racing sixteen ice cream vans.

Hollywood actor Wesley Snipes has received a three-year prison sentence for tax offences.

A federal judge handed down the maximum term requested by prosecutors - a year for each of Snipes's convictions of wilfully failing to file a tax return.

Snipes's lawyers had called for leniency, arguing that the offences were misdemeanours and that the star was of good character.

But prosecutors said an example should be set because of Snipes's fame.

In February, Snipes was found guilty of deliberately failing to file tax returns for 1999, 2000 and 2001, but was cleared of more serious fraud and conspiracy charges.

Aphex Twin....

Nine Inch Nails..."Only".

Nine Inch Nails..."Down In It."

The Guys Keep On Rockin...The Concept Is Genius.

Grimy.

You Want To Know What Kind Of Hip Hop I Still Find Relevant?

Kool Keith Hits Ya With "Plastic World".(Plus Secret Bonus Track)

The Grouch From Oakland Says What I Always Say.."You Aint Artsy".

Rumor: 360 GTA DLC will be 'Entirely New Cities'

Internet rumor is improbable -- but not impossible. Also, awesome.
By Mark Whiting, 04/18/2008
Kotaku's got a great GTA IV rumor posted at the moment, clipped from a recent CVG print feature about Rockstar's upcoming new megagame Grand Theft Auto IV.

While you should probably take this latest info with at least a grain of critical salt, the original article was originally published under the watchful auspices of Microsoft -- a company presumably in the know as far their own DLC is concerned. The rumor going round is that GTA IV's downloadable "expansion" content (you know, the stuff exclusive to the Xbox 360) will be large enough in scope to constitute entirely new cities. From the article:

"Of course to call games as vastly ambitious as Vice City or San Andreas mere 'expansion packs' seems childish, but nevertheless, the downloadable content coming for the Xbox 360 version of IV has repositioned those games in just this way.

"[GTA IV's expansions] are to GTA IV what Vice City or San Andreas were GTA III. Yes, Rockstar is clearly hinting at new downloadable cities; and the chances of them being London, Vice City or SA again are slim to none. So that's new as in brand new. GTA IV's Liberty City is the beginning. Think about that and be excited."

If true, that'd be quite the coup for Microsoft, don't you think? Obviously at this point it's mostly just speculation, and of course nobody's actually saying whether these new cities will constitute anything more than roadside truck stops and wilderness or whether they'll be as full fledged as New Jersey. Still, the possibility that the GTA IV equivalent to Vice City could be as simple and direct as a download-only bolt-on to the original game isn't so far-fetched as to be unbelievable. This is Rockstar that we're talking about.

#6: The Confederate Flag

March 11, 2008 by Precious Roy

As popular as it is controversial, perhaps nothing White Trash People like is as misunderstood at the Confederate Flag.

Most sensible people see the Dixie Flag as a symbol of ignorance and racism. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.

From a sociological perspective, the flag is a statement about pride in their Southern heritage. It’s a way of being a Southerner and resisting the perceived dominance of the North simply by hanging a piece of cloth in their window.

In this context, it’s also a way of saying, “I have better things to do with my money than spend it on curtains.”

From a political perspective the flag really has nothing to do with slavery or the segregationist Jim Crows laws that were enacted in the wake of Reconstruction. Instead, the Confederate flag is really about about states rights.

Specifically: the right to own slaves and count them as the 3/5th of a person that they really are.

But more than any of that, waving a confederate flag is actually a sentimental statement about how history plays out. It’s a way for a White Trash man to say, “If the South had won the Civil War, I would be mustachioed plantation owner with a Southern Belle of a wife in clad in spine-curving corset and petticoat and we would sit on the porch of our mansion and sip lemonaide while overlooking our acres and acres of cotton fields being worked by as a race of biologically inferior people as is my birthright. Instead I live in a trailer with a garden of rusted auto parts out front.”

That’s why the stars and bars is really about.

Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe.

Another Life Lost In Iraq.

NEW YORK - There's another side to Alicia Keys: conspiracy theorist.

The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter tells Blender magazine: "'Gangsta rap' was a ploy to convince black people to kill each other. 'Gangsta rap' didn't exist.
"

Keys, 27, said she's read several Black Panther autobiographies and wears a gold AK-47 pendant around her neck "to symbolize strength, power and killing 'em dead," according to an interview in the magazine's May issue, on newsstands Tuesday.


Another of her theories: The bicoastal feud between slain rappers Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. was fueled "by the government and the media, to stop another great black leader from existing.
"

Keys' AK-47 jewelry came as a surprise to her mother, who is quoted as telling Blender: "She wears what? That doesn't sound like Alicia." Keys' publicist, Theola Borden, said Keys was on vacation and unavailable for comment.


Though she's known for her romantic tunes, she told Blender that she wants to write more political songs. If black leaders such as the late Black Panther Huey Newton "had the outlets our musicians have today, it'd be global. I have to figure out a way to do it myself," she said.


The multiplatinum songstress behind the hits "Fallin"' and "No One" most recently had success with her latest CD, "As I Am," which sold millions.

LH9 Member JayStats Brings Us A Customer Service Nightmare...

A Great Movie From The Phillipines..."For Your Height Only". This Movie Stars A Guy Named Weng Weng.

Hey Look! It's The White Folks From MTV's "The Hills".They Seem To Have Made A Negro Friend.

Chicharrones...This Comes From Grocery Eats.com

If you’ve never had chicharrones then you my friend are missing out on the taste of magic. If you’re wondering just what the fuck I’m talking about, chicharron is pork rind aka cracklins aka pork skin. They are served in a number of ways, most often you can find them seasoned and deep fried.

You can usually cop these at any corner store. I like them but that’s is just some entry level shit into the world of chicharrones. If you really want to taste your dreams then you need to man the fuck up and get some Chicharron Tacos. Thing with them is that they don’t deep fry the skin for the tacos. It’s seasoned and and fried in a pan.

Hands down the best place in San Francisco to get chicharron is La Palma out on 24th and Florida. It’s a Mexicatessan. They sell their own lard, salsas (salsa casero is my favorite), cheeses, tortillas, carnitas by the pound, and a whole mess of shit. You can have your chicharron prepared in a variety of ways. My favorite though is the tacos de canasta. Canasta means basket. These are premade tacos that are put in a basket under layers of cloth to keep them warm. What makes these good is that since they are in the basket the warm tacos sweat in their own steam resulting in a soft and slightly greasy tortilla. Not oily, just greasy enough to give the tortilla a small taste of pork fat. The crispy chicharron becomes super tender and just taste fucking amazing.

Aside from the taco’s de canasta there are also just straight up tacos, these being Tacos Casero. As can be seen below these are much crispier chunks of pork skin. The small chunks of fat hanging on are just another layer in this awesome as fuck flavor profile.

Finally we get to the fucking beast. The chicharron burrito aka the tube of death.

excuse the budlight, I was at my boys house and that’s all he had.

This is not something standard. It’s not on the menu at La Palma but if you ask they will make. Dude didn’t even flinch when I asked for it so I knew I was about to get bodied. I ordered a regular because I didn’t want to fuck it all up with all the shit that comes with a super. That and the thought of jamming this thing full of crema and cheese was scary. La Palma uses real crema, not some bullshit sour cream from safeway. The first bite was just rice and beans so I thought to myself, fuck I coming through the back door on this shit.

This was the like my third bite and I thought shit this won’t be so bad, a good mix of chicharron and filler. A small amount of relief over came me as I realized this would actually be manageable. I was fucking wrong. I took another bite and the chicharron let me know that this shit was not a game.

This was fucking war. I fought through intense lays of seasoned fried pork skin. In the beginning the flavor just exploded in my mouth with each crack of crispy pork skin, but as I progressed I began to hear a little voice in my head screaming “NOOOOOO!!!” That voice was my stomach. I ignored that voice because this was war and I wanted to win. I fought long and hard but in the end I lost. I got to the heel and while I had destroyed all of the meat that last little bit of rice, beans and tortilla fucking taunted me. I couldn’t put it down. I could have if I didn’t put away 4 tacos prior to this battle but I wasn’t thinking. The burrito fucking murdered me.

As much as I would like to have a rematch I don’t think it’s wise. Yeah I was hungover but this shit is no joke. My stomach was working overtime on that shit. My advice to you is to just have the tacos. Unless you don’t like someone, then ask your taqueria to deep fry your chicharron burrito and ruin someone’s life with that.

in related news, after this and deep fried pancakes my wife is beginning to think that Grocery is a bad influence.

LH9 Says 50's Model Evelyn West Has The Right Stuff! Torpedos Launch!!!

Here Is West Coast Rapper The Game...Pontificating On The Geo Political Ramifications Of Voting For Barack Obama.

AllHipHop.com: Who you got in the election? Who you going for?

The Game: Man, I’m goin’ for the n***a man. Obama. Man I don’t give a f**k what he talkin’ bout I ain’t heard Obama say nothin’. I just know that n***a black and he about to win this s**t. Hillary need to fall back man. I’m going for Obama man, that n***a could say I’m going to kill every n***a in the hood when I get in there – I’m going for Obama man. That’s it. Gotta see a Black man, man I’m biased man. I’m biased.

AllHipHop.com: So you have no other reason than that?

The Game: No, I’m following the n****s. Goin’ in.

AllHipHop.com: Alright, but you know you got kids now you –

The Game: N***er. N***ers, following the n***ers, man, to the underground railroad ‘til we find the light we goin’ all the way to the White House man, gotta see that. If you Black and you don’t vote for Obama you just need to find a revolver spin that b***h and pop ‘til your noodles’ on the f***in side of the bed man. That’s just a no brainer man. That’s so big man! A Black dude running [for president] – where the f**k did Obama come from man? You sure he ain’t Osama’s nephew or son? Like Obama just out of nowhere - just Obama. We’ve been knowing about Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton all of a sudden, n***a, like a year ago [a] light skinned n***a lookin’ like Tiger Woods’ brother just runnin’ for president and I don’t know man it’s a conspiracy. [Laughs]

Move Your Boogie Body With Jazzercize!This Is Insane Batshit Crazy.I Think This Chick Hooked Up With Some Brother With A Gheri Curl At Her Local Black Angus Dance Night In L.A. In 1982,And that Influenced Her To Do This...

Ladies And Gentlemen....I Bring You The Awesome Chinese Hammer.

Baltimore Brunch

March 7, 2008

Last month DJ Bo Bliz, some ladies, and your’s truely decided to eat off our hangovers after a night on the town in Charm City. The results - Bliz’ chili cheese filled omlet over pankcakes, topped with onion rings, bacon and syrup.

My 3 eggs, steak, potatoes, bacon, onion rings, and oysters order crushed it in sheer magnitude, but lacked in the ingenuity department. +1 Bliz

-matt brains

A game set in Africa where disease infected people turn to zombies and is being mowed down by an army fatigue wearing white man. Is this racist or not that is the question on the minds of many who are awaiting the new game by Capcon called Resident Evil 5. Most of us know this game by now at least from the last two movies and the new one set to release here soon. Nay Sayers are pointing out the fact that the game has already cast whites from the U.S. and Spaniards from Spain as the zombies and worthy of killing so why not blacks from Africa?

We should look at it from all sides. I can see where they are going when they say that it wasn’t “inherently” racist. Since the people who designed the games were Asian and the game had previously profiled a couple of other nationalities as the diseased creatures being blown to the after life by the hero or heroine. Did Capcon deliberately pick Africa, or the fact that the hero was a Caucasian wearing army fatigues, or know that people would be sensitive and complain. The answer is of course they knew.

There had to be a team of people who went through the fine tuning of the game, picking location, plot, etc., which means that they probably went over every aspect of the game. To say that the Asian designers are unaware of the problems associated with Caucasians and Africans is just plain ridiculous. I think that slavery and the American condition is extremely prominent point in American history. We study world history and I would have to believe that Asians and others do as well.

The problem with the game is not that it takes place in Africa, that is fine and worthy of a game. The problems are that:

This game portrays the Africans as diseased, when we know that there is Aids which is a real problem there and the world seems to be ignoring the situation.

The game portrays a Caucasian in army fatigues as the so called hero or “savior” who is let loose to run roughshod over those diseased Africans. We know that there are people in the U.S. who are touting that in order to stave off AIDS we should start “exterminating” those with the disease in Africa.

The fact that they don’t give you any other choices for a hero except that of a white man. This is a very sensitive issue since the fact is that whites raped Africa of its people, land and natural resources. In fact they continue to rape and pillage Africa as we speak.

It doesn’t matter that they had already used whites and Spaniards as the zombies. There is no stigmatism in using white on white crime in a game. There is a sense of propaganda when young white children are exposed to the wonton killing of blacks or Africans for fun. The problem is that there is already a sense of privilege and the “I’m better than them” attitude that is instilled from early on by seeing the abhorrent treatment of blacks on television, movies, news and life in general.

So if we put this all together we can see full well that this game is going to be perceived as racist. Did Capcon bank on that to make controversy surround the game thereby causing it to get a lot of media attention without having to dig into the coffers for advertising? That is a real possibility, but that still leaves open the fact that using racism in any fashion is wrong and insensitive. I personally believe that regardless of who the game creators were; this game is blatantly racists. I do not believe that we are being too sensitive because unfortunately the scenario happens way too often which causes a heightened sensitivity to the issue.

These types of issues will rise up time and time again until people either stop being racist or stop being so insensitive about others painful pasts, present and future.

Resident Evil 5 Controvesy

An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"

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Achebe notes that Congo basin sculpture was enthralling Picasso, Matisse, and Gaugin, just as Conrad's Congo-faring protagonist was questioning "the very humanity of black people".

An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" is the published (and amended) version of the second Chancellor’s Lecture given by Chinua Achebe at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in February 1975. The text is considered to be part of the Postcolonial critical movement, which advocates considering the viewpoints of non-Westernized nations, as well as peoples coping with the effects of colonialism.

In An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Achebe attacks Joseph Conrad’s text as racist. According to Achebe, Conrad refuses to bestow "human expression" on Africans, even depriving them of language. Africa itself is rendered as "the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization", "a foil to Europe, as a place of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar, in comparison with which Europe's own state of spiritual grace will be manifest."

Contents [hide] 1 The essay 2 Counterpoint 3 References 4 Bibiliography of Useful Resources 5 External links

[edit] The essay

Achebe moves beyond the text of Conrad's Heart of Darkness in advancing his argument. Achebe quotes a passage from Conrad, as Conrad recalls his first encounter with an African in his own life:

A certain enormous buck nigger encountered in Haiti fixed my conception of blind, furious, unreasoning rage, as manifested in the human animal to the end of my days. Of the nigger I used to dream for years afterwards.

The Nigerian author concludes that "...Conrad had a problem with niggers. His inordinate love of that word itself should be of interest to psychoanalysts. Sometimes his fixation on blackness is equally interesting..."

Achebe asserts that while Conrad was not himself responsible for the xenophobic “image of Africa” that appears in Heart of Darkness, his novel continues to perpetuate the damaging stereotypes of black peoples by its inclusion in the literary canon of the modern Western world. His searing critique is sometimes taught side-by-side with Conrad’s work, and is regularly included in critical editions of the text.

The question is whether a novel which celebrates this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called a great work of art. My answer is: No, it cannot.

[edit] Counterpoint

This critique has been attacked by some as short-sighted or political,^[1] or as an example of political correctness run amok. Conrad has frequently been defended on the basis of the historical context in which he lived, or on the grounds that his writing is nonetheless "beautiful".^[2]

Many critics have attacked Achebe himself, for his criticism of Conrad. A popular rebuttal of Achebe's essay is that of University of Sussex English professor Cedric Watts, who believes that there is in Achebe's stance "an insinuation... that whites are disqualified on racial grounds from judging the text."^[3][4] Watts has stated that he believes Achebe's perspective is directed at the "White-American Establishment".^[5]

When questioned about his view as to the "artistic merit" of Conrad's work, Achebe responded:

I never said at any point that you should stop attaching artistic merit to Heart of Darkness, if you want to you can. There are all kinds of sophisticated readings of Heart of Darkness, and there are some people who will not be persuaded there is anything wrong with it. But all that I'm really demanding, I'm not simply putting it, I'm demanding that my reading stand beside these other readings... Although he's writing good sentences, he's also writing about a people, and their life. And he says about these people that they are rudimentary souls... The Africans are the rudimentaries, and then on top are the good whites. Now I don't accept that, as a basis for... As a basis for anything.^[6]

1Up's Dan "Shoe" Hsu Resigns
By Kris Graft	Print | Send to a friend | Email the editor
Longtime games journalist Dan "Shoe" Hsu has announced his resignation as editorial director of Ziff Davis' 1Up Network.
1Up Network announced Friday that Hsu, who was previously editor-in-chief of Electronic Gaming Monthly, would be stepping down "to pursue personal interests." He'll officially depart on April 25. Taking his place will be 1Up site director Sam Kennedy, who was also formerly editor-in-chief of 1Up.com. Kennedy will report to VP of content Simon Cox. Hsu said in a blog entry that 1Up will be in "excellent hands" under Kennedy. Hsu added that he is leaving on his own volition, and is "not being forced out or laid off or anything like that." He also said that his departure is not related to the recent canning of the print edition of Games for Windows Magazine. Hsu has been with Ziff Davis Media since 1996. "For better or for worse, you'll hear from me again in the near future. I love the videogame business too much to stay away," he said. For now, Hsu said he'll be taking some time off, and plans to beat some games, get some Achievements, and possibly try World of Warcraft.

Punch,Punch Baby!

Rapper turned rocker Vanilla Ice was charged with domestic battery for allegedly assaulting his wife last night (April 10).

According to South Florida’s Sun-Sentinel, Vanilla Ice, born Robert Van Winkle was originally accused of striking and kicking his wife, Laura Van Winkle during an argument.

Vanilla Ice, 40, told police that he and his wife had been arguing since Wednesday, when he left there house to avoid an altercation.

He returned sometime last night and the married couple fought again.

By the time the police arrived at the Van Winkle’s home, the rapper’s wife told police she did not want any media attention and that he only pushed her.

Vanilla Ice was charged with domestic battery. He denied pushing or striking his wife.

The rapper served one year’s probation, after pleading no contest to a domestic violence charge in 2001, after he allegedly pulled hair from his wife’s head during an argument on Interstate 595.

Vanilla Ice is best remembered for his 1990 smash single "Ice Ice Baby."

racist casting and 21

There's been a lot of chatter and gripes lately about the movie 21, which opens in theaters nationwide this Friday. Longtime readers know that this movie has been on our radar for several years, ever since it was announced that Sony had the film in development, with Kevin Spacey attached to the project. Based on the bestselling book Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich, it tells the story of how a team of gifted blackjack players from MIT developed a highly successful card-counting system and took Las Vegas casinos for millions. Based on a true story, it's a great premise, and the perfect idea for a big budget Hollywood movie. Right? Not exactly.

You see, in real life, the blackjack team was a group mostly made up of Asian American students. This was actually advantageous to their strategy, as it happens, because Asian dudes winning big money at the casinos apparently aren't quite as conspicuous as white dudes who win big at the casinos. That's just the way it is. Anyway. As we all know, Hollywood studios seem to have a great of resistance to creating interesting, fully-fleshed, three-dimensional roles for Asian American actors. They seem to think we can't carry a movie, and more often than not, will instead create roles and stories for pretty white people instead. I know this, you know this, we all know this. Hell, they know this.

Case in point, 21. Except here, we actually have a true story that involved real living, breathing Asian Americans, who have been magically switched out on celluloid into—you guessed it—pretty white people. Namely, Kate Bosworth and Jim Sturgess. This has pretty much been the plan since the beginning, and now, the movie finally hits movie screens this week. Business as usual. That's racist!

AICN has an interview with Jeff Ma, the guy who Sturgess' character is based on. He doesn't seem to mind that they've changed his character's ethnicity... I guess he's entitled to that. It still doesn't change the fact that this movie was born out of the stereotypical Hollywood casting process. This is from an article on author Ben Mezrich and Bringin Down the House from 2005:

This view is brought about in part by Hollywood, with films like "Ocean's Eleven,"in which gambling is made to seem exotic and sexy. Incidentally, Mezrich's "Bringing Down the House" is now being turned into a feature film by Kevin Spacey, who will play the MIT professor who trained the blackjack team described in that book. During the talk, Mezrich mentioned the stereotypical Hollywood casting process--though most of the actual blackjack team was composed of Asian males, a studio executive involved in the casting process said that most of the film's actors would be white, with perhaps an Asian female. Even as Asian actors are entering more mainstream films, such as "Better Luck Tomorrow" and the upcoming "Memoirs of a Geisha," these stereotypes still exist, Mezrich said.

I must note that the movie's cast includes a couple of Asian American characters, played by Aaron Yoo and Liza Lapira. They're part of the blackjack team, and do have a (less prominent) place on the movie poster. It counts for something. I really am glad that these two are in the movie, apparently added later to mitigate some of the initial controversy stirred up by this casting nonsense. Sure, it feels like the producers are throwing us a bone. They are. What they're crafting is pure Hollywood falsity. But I'm happy to see that these two rising stars will get due exposure in a high-profile movie a lot of people are going to see. I'm okay with that. (I might have to take these statements back if/when I actually see them in the movie.)

Now, there's a pretty vocal anti-21 movement that's been growing over the last few months. This movie has got a lot of people angry. There have even been calls for a an all-out boycott of 21. I'm going to put it out there—I'm not necessarily in favor of a boycott, nor am I against one either. I'm not sure where I stand on that. But I'm certainly in favor of anything that draws attention and educates people on the issues at hand. This is a good one, because it brings scrutiny to the nature of Hollywood's racist casting processes, with a very obvious, high-profile example. People are interested in this movie, without a lot of background knowledge, but this is an opportunity to create dialogue on a general practice that has systematically shut out Asians in Hollywood for years. I hope it prompts folks understand what's going on here, learn the details for themselves, talk about it, and perhaps approach 21 (and future Hollywood product) with a more discerning eye.

angrylink

Great New Track.

The King.

The Obama Preacher Video Was Brought To LH9 By V. Wonglam.

R.I.P. Charleton Heston.He Was 84.

New Madonna.

Maybe I Will Escape...

Smoking is the most potent known cause of lung cancer. The question is: Why do some longtime smokers come down with the deadly disease whereas others escape it? New research points to a genetic culprit that also was fingered as upping a person's likelihood of becoming hooked on cigarettes.

Two new studies link a variation in a gene residing on chromosome 15 (of a person's 23 pairs of chromosomes) to a heightened risk of developing lung cancer; a third study suggests that the same mutation affects a person's tendency to become addicted to smokes and, by extension, develop the dreaded disease. Lung cancer is diagnosed in some 200,000 Americans and kills more than 150,000 each year.

The new research—published in both Nature and Nature Genetics—suggests that people with this genetic flaw have a 30 percent greater chance of developing the often-fatal illness. But the studies differ on the potential added risk of addiction. The findings offer insight into how this particular genetic variation and smoking interact to cause lung cancer. They provide "new targets for starting to think about how to treat drug addiction and, also, of course, for the prevention or treatment of lung cancer," says Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) in Bethesda, Md., who was not involved in the study.

The research teams scanned a catalog of 300,000 minute changes in the genome in which a base (unit of genetic material) was either deleted, duplicated or substituted. (Such alterations are known as single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs.) In one study, scientists from Iceland-based biotechnology company deCODE genetics tried to correlate these genetic variants with a person's smoking habits; the other research efforts attempted to tie them to lung cancer.

The deCODE group surveyed 50,000 Icelandic smokers about their habits; using information gleaned from that survey as well as from genomic scans of 40,000 admitted smokers in the bunch, the researchers zeroed in on a variant of the gene CHRNA, which codes for a receptor on nerve cells that can be stimulated by nicotine. The altered version of the gene was more common in the heaviest smokers than it was in the rest of the population. "Nonsmokers have a higher frequency of this variant than smokers that smoke between one to 10 cigs per day," notes neurologist Kári Stefánsson, deCODE's CEO, "because if you smoke and you have this variant, you tend to smoke more than 10 cigs per day."

When Stefánsson's team applied the stats to the incidence of lung cancer, it found that individuals with two copies of the altered gene had a whopping 70 percent greater chance of developing lung cancer; those with one copy had a 30 percent higher risk.

These findings are virtually identical to those of the other studies—one (in Nature) conducted by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France (which was based on examinations of some 11,000 volunteers, 7,500 of whom were smokers) and the other (in Nature Genetics) by a team at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, which examined 9,000 individuals, some 4,000 of whom were smokers.

Paul Brennan, who led the IARC study, says he initially believed that the risk of getting lung cancer was elevated by the genetic predisposition to become addicted. "The genes made you more likely to smoke, made you likely to smoke more, made you less likely to give up, and therefore more likely to develop lung cancer," he says. But his research showed that, in fact, the gene appeared to independently increase a person's risk of developing the disease—with no link to addiction.

NIDA's Volkow suggests that the gene variant may lead certain individuals to smoke more due to its effect on the brain's reward centers (associated with addictive behavior) and may increase the risk of cancer, too, because it also plays a role in lung tissue function. Epidemiologist Christopher Amos, who led the Texas study, notes that the same nicotine receptor implicated in this study was shown in previous research to prompt tumor growth in other areas of the body, most notably the thymus (an organ located near the lungs that produces immune cells). "Nicotine or its derivatives can stimulate cells to proliferate, participate in new blood vessel development, and also not undergo cell death," he says, which are all characteristics of tumor formation and growth. "So that raises the possibility that there's a direct effect through nicotine in activating cells to go on to become cancerous."

Brennan says more research is needed before the findings can be put into play.

"There's not a public health message here that you can find out what version of the gene you have and decide whether to keep on smoking or not," he says. "You have to bear in mind that there are so many other disease[s] that are caused by smoking."