We talked about it on this week’s Everything Actioncast and now, here’s your chance to watch the whole pinball documentary, “Special When Lit”.  The documentary covers all the aspects of pinball, from a brief history to the major players to the company that still cranks them out to the obsessive collectors who hoard them in their houses.  If you’re a fan of King of Kong, you’ll probably like Special When Lit.  Check out the whole movie below, courtesy of Hulu.

This week Zach, Chris and Joe talk about The King of Kong and the dangers of becoming obsessed with classic video games, Jurassic Park video games, memory loss movies and more.

• Show and Tell: Joe watched The Sunset Limited, Survival of the Dead, Fracture and Knight & Day, Chris finally watched The King of Kong and Date Night and started Spartacus: Gods of the Arena and Zach finished Season Two of Sliders for the site and watched Black Death, Unknown and played the first episode of Back to the Future: The Game.
• News: Apollo 18 trailer, Jurassic Park game trailer, Telltale games making a Walking Dead game, Detroit building a statue of Robocop thanks to intrepid citizens.  Also the New Release Round Up.
• Special Feature- Memory Loss: With the 10th anniversary of Memento this week, the guys talk about movies that feature amnesia/memory loss like Total Recall, Paycheck, Dark City, the Bourne Movies and more.

We want to hear your comments, feedback and, most importantly, suggestions for discussion topics. Send them all to contact@everythingaction.com. Also, be sure to subscribe to us in the iTunes music store (just do a search for Everything Actioncast in the store) and follow us on twitter @evaction and on Facebook (search on Facebook for our Everything Action group).

So the Spike VGAs were last night and, as usual, they had a bunch of “world premieres” with the one I’m sure everyone here is most excited about being Batman: Arkham City, the sequel to the greatness that is Arkham Asylum.   With Arkham pretty much destroyed after the Joker’s takeover, an entire section of Gotham is turned into the new prison/insane asylum, but, of course, things go bad once again.  The Joker is definitely returning, and it’s going to be the last performance of him by Mark Hamill, and in this new trailer we see that Dr. Hugo Strange is going to be one of the main villains as well.  Some promo images also show Catwoman and Two-Face showing up as well.  This is probably my most anticipated game of next year so I’m going to go watch the trailer a couple more times and you can watch it below.

This week the unrestrained tangent following of Zach, Joe and Chris talks about the possible inspiration for The Dark Knight Rises, the many faults Watchmen, the appeal of Anthony Bourdain and the perfect video game version of Inception.

• Show and Tell: Chris watched Faster (as did Zach), Surf Ninjas, and also watched a bunch of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations.  Joe watched Crazy Heart and The Ultimate Fighter finale, and Zach watched the series finale of Terriers, Watchmen: Director’s Cut and Operation: Endgame.  All the guys, of course, watched the season finale of The Walking Dead as well.
• News: The Back to the Future game gets a trailer, Inception is possibly going to be turned into a video game, Batman: Prey is potentially the basis for The Dark Knight Rises and more details about the Burn Notice prequel movie plus Dexter gets renewed.  All that plus the New Release Round Up.
• Tim Burton: It’s the 20th anniversary of Edward Scissorhands so the guys take that as an opportunity to talk about the director’s storied career; starting out with Pee Wee’s Big Adventure and all the way to this year’s Alice in Wonderland.

We want to hear your comments, feedback and, most importantly, suggestions for discussion topics. Send them all to contact@everythingaction.com. Also, be sure to subscribe to us in the iTunes music store (just do a search for Everything Actioncast in the store) and follow us on twitter @evaction and on Facebook.

Earl Boen

Born: November 7, 1985

Best Known for Playing: Squirmy Psycholgists and video game narrators.

First Appearance: Additional Voices on The Jetsons (1962)

Most Recent Appearance: Mysterious Man on Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated (2010)

Notable Roles:

• Dr. Peter Silberman in Terimator, Terminator 2 and Terminator 3
• Taurus on GI Joe
• Duncan Crais in Alien Nation
• LeChuck in the Monkey Island video game series.
• Dr. Stein in Marked for Death
• Rhino on Batman: The Animated Series
• Beyonder on Spider-Man
• Eulogist on Seinfeld (The Pony Remark)
• Narrator in World of Warcraft

Fun Facts

• Only actor besides Arnold to appear in the first three Terminator movies.
• Has played a psychologist five times
• Retired from acting in 2003
• Portrayed Zeus on the Animaniacs and in the Islands of Adventure attraction Poseidon’s Fury

Everyone loves Mickey Mouse but it’s been a while since he’s done anything exciting.  Well, this fall Mickey is back and battling his way through a dark alternate universe in Epic Mickey on the Wii.  After accidentally destroying a wizard’s model with magic ink, many years later Mickey is pulled into the wasteland that resulted by the evil Phantom Blot and must deal with his forgotten predecessor, Oswald the Rabbit.  Wielding a magic paintbrush armed with ink and paint thinner, Mickey will have to battle his way home.  The opening cinematic was released yesterday and you can check it out below.  I wish there was a PS3/360 version because it looks awesome.

What happens when Zach and Chris are left with hosting duties for the week?  The most tangent filled, nerdiest episode ever.  The duo talks about the return of Futurama, the bizarreness of the Seinfeld pilot, Green Arrow, ridiculous moments in Marvel Comics and spend over an hour talking about everything Power Rangers.

• Show and Tell: Chris stays current by watching Office Space and also checked out the first episode of Louis C.K.’s new show Louie, Zach watched Changeling and Toy Story 3 and both the guys watched the premiere of Futurama.
• News: Pirates of the Caribbean 4 plot revealed, trailers for Green Hornet, Red and Predators and Marvel might start making short films.  Also the New Release Round Up.
• Power Rangers!: It’s the 15th anniversary of the movie this week so Chris and Zach go into depth about it’s pros and cons, how it’s different from the show, favorite crazy monsters and crazier Zords, was Ernie actually Zordon?, PSAs, video games and knock off shows like Big Bad Beetleborgs.

We want to hear your comments, feedback and, most importantly, suggestions for discussion topics. Send them all to contact@everythingaction.com. Also, be sure to subscribe to us in the iTunes music store (just do a search for Everything Actioncast in the store) and follow us on twitter @evaction.

*BONUS* The bizarre anti-bullying PSA from the Power Rangers:

So we’re not a video game site but this was too awesome to not post.  One of the most anticipated games is the upcoming Bioware MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic and, just like last year, they have an amazing cinematic trailer that they showed at E3.  Depicting the Battle of Alderaan, the evil Sith lord Darth Malgus tricks the Republic into leaving the planet virtually defenseless, letting him easily overrun it’s defenses.  However, a small group of Republic Troopers flee into the woods and start a guerilla campaign against the Sith.  Dear George Lucas, make a full length movie like this and we might forgive you for the prequels.

Although it’s debuting in front of Get Him to the Greek this weekend, the full trailer for Scott Pilgrim got released early when it’s Facebook page got over 100,000 fans.  Helmed by Edgar Wright and starring Michael Cera as Scott, the movie looks absolutely insane with crazy fight scenes, comic flourishes and video game sound effects.  Scott has to battle his new girlfriend’s seven evil ex-boyfriends before he can truly be with her.  Check out the trailer below and the movie comes out this August.

Were you listening to this week’s podcast and wondering, “What the hell is this Gamebox 1.0 movie Chris was talking about?”  Well, wonder no more as, amazingly, Hulu has the whole thing available for your viewing horror.  Nate Richert, who played Harvey on Sabrina the Teenage Witch, stars as Charlie Nash.  Charlie is a video game tester who gets a mysterious VR game system in the mail that incorporates people from his actual life into three available games.  Charlie becomes obsessed with the Gambox when it creates a doppelganger of his murdered girlfriend Kate (played by Boy Meets World’s Danielle Fishel) and starts to effect his life outside of the game.  It’s about on par with something SyFy would do with a slightly bigger budget.   Check out the whole thing below and get a taste of what watching movies with Chris is like.

Back in 2007 we were introduced to one of cinema’s greatest villains, Donkey Kong champion Billy Mitchell.  Seemingly unstoppable, one man rose up to challenge him, school teacher Steve Wiebe. The two battled back and forth and   Wiebe had the record for a few fleeting moments before Billy wrenched it back.  Now, a new challenger has arisen and has finally brought down the mulleted one.  In two and a half hours Dr. Hank Chian scored 1,061,700 points, putting him 11,500 above Mitchell and 12,600 in front of Wiebe.  Dr. Chien is a plastic surgeon from New York who started playing Donkey Kong 8 or 9 months ago.  Will Billy Mitchell let this stand? Only time will tell.

This ain't your daddy's Tetris. Er...Tekken.

Whenever Video Games get the special Movie adaptations, one of three things happen. 1) The Planets align and the people from Hollywood and a game studio actually produce a watchable movie. 2) A movie is made by someone that wrote the script by listing to a child’s rant of a game. 3) “Double Dragon syndrome”*

*Note: “Double Dragon syndrome” is a movie based on a child’s rant, whose own rant is based on another child’s lying rant about the game’s box art.

Many have tried to conquer the Video Game movie adaption. Gamers will argue about which movies are acceptable video game adaptations, and very few have passed without rebuttal from the gaming community. One passable movie is Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. There are some great anime adaption’s that are pretty accurate to the games; these animations are usually produced by the same company as the game studios, and made in the same country. If anything, it’s a zoo for American movie studio’s to visit to watch what an adaption should be like. But instead, they choose to go to strip clubs and Denny’s. Hence, the video game movie market is covered in pile. Buttery, salty pile.

Tekken is an upcoming movie that might be a movie that can be considered a decent martial arts film, but I have been disappointed before.The plot of the Tekken’s video game series is cross between the worst budgeted 70’s Kung-Fu movies and the left over chunks of a Power Ranger’s episode that didn’t get edited in America. For those who are not familiar with the Tekken series, it’s about a group of the weirdest martial arts to ever throw punches at each other to be the King of the Iron Fist. This involves the timeless roaster of a couple of dysfunctional families, furries, exotic pet animals, robots, underage & over developed teenagers, parodies of movie stars, and of course one or two fighters who brought weapons to a mix martial arts fight. For confusing reasons, every Tekken game revolved around people trying to win the King of Iron Fist to…like say they did it! There never is a clear reason what or why they these people fight in the Tekken Tournament expect for revenge or money. But most endings in the games are cannon since every new game made follows the Mishima/Kazama family and their endings are usually the most comprehensible; even if it involves family abuse and a technical raping.

Tekken was a 3D fighting game that you can win if you have skills. However, sometimes if you gamble away at the buttons, hoping your sequences of button mashing will input the correct move to perform the cheapest hits possible. You can brag that you mastered the rare 6 hit, 70+ damage attacks, but all of that could burn when a new player defeats you with a 3 punch combo. An automatic 3 punch combo that is performed by pressing 1 button 3 times. And God help you if they figured out the throw buttons. This is a common problem with fighting games, but it is a skid mark on a well paved road of game designs. To its credit, the year was 1994, and Tekken’s best rivals were the classic 2D sprites of Street Fighter, the bloody Mortal Kombat, and the no-none sense fighting game Virtual Fighter (a game that eradicated all the crazy game gimmicks and actual took skill to play. Look at the title; you knew exactly what you were playing). Video games could be made about a fast moving hedgehog that messed with technology, a female space bounty hunter who was chasing a purple alien dinosaur, and an earth worm named Jim. Just watching the trailer, I can predict the entire cliché plot, but I can as see bits of the game series poking through the Hollywood written glory hole. The first smart movie was to get a cast that resembles the video game characters, and they don’t have to actually talk or create character development. The beauty of movies based on fighting games is that there shouldn’t be lengthy dialogue. In fact, it should be a damn rule. Street Fighter failed on two parts because they hired the runner ups of an amateur cosplay event, and almost every character had pointless dialogue. Tekken’s is close to this problem, but there is no muck up of character history. (You remember when Ken and Ryu became con artists and faked being lords of war?) At least I assume so far.

Wait...Tekken could be on to something....

The second smart move was to modify the movie towards the American market. Every modest gamer knows that anything based off a Japanese product usually have chunks that are lost in translation. So instead of movies like Ju-On, Ringu, Kario, and Dark Water; we get The Grudge, Pulse, and Dark Water (But Jennifer Connelly is in it!). So the culture is stripped and processed, the American way!  You can first notice this when the fast pace trailer begins with random fight scenes, the sexual tension, generic rock music playing, the overplayed one sentence lines, and how much hope the other characters have riding on Jin Kazama like they already knew they had secondary roles.

Your Tekken is MINE!

The third smart move the production team has done was to hire Cary-Hiroyuki mother fucking-Shang Tsung Tagawa. Mr. Tagawa has experience in martial arts, Disney movies, and being in a video game based movie. Hopefully he has read the script and mention things that should be improved, such as more fight scenes and less talking.  His role as Shang Tsung did have a bit of  Bond-like villain traits like ranting about his plans and employing crappy warriors. In hindsight, Tekken isn’t going to be the best video game adaption or re-invent the martial arts genre. It certainly does not look like it will bring anything new to the martial arts table either. If anything it might just appear at the table, violently shake it while swiping a few objects , and then quickly leave as once it came.

Also, Japan is not fairing too well in the adaption’s either. Take a look at the trailer for Dead Rising The Movie. A movie that is based on a video game that is inspired by a movie(s).

DVDs:

Drag Me to Hell

Jackass: The Lost Tapes

Land of the Lost

The Proposal

Legend of the Seeker Season One

Married With Children The Final Season

Video Games

Brutal Legend (360, PS3)

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3)

Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympics (Wii, DS)

Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition (360, PS3)

A Boy and His Blob (Wii)

Magna Carta 2 (360)

Half Minute Hero (PSP)

DVDs

Ken Burns: National Parks- America’s Best Idea

Year One

Trick R Treat

Bones Season Four

My Life in Ruins

Anvil: The Story of Anvil

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Diamond Edition

Contact (Blu Ray)

Audition (Blu Ray)

A Charlie Brown Christmas (Blu Ray)

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Blu Ray)

Video Games

Wii Fit Plus (Wii)

Demon Souls (PS3)

NBA 2K10 (360, PS3)

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising (PC, 360, PS3)

Star Wars: The Clone Wars- Republic Heroes (Wii, PS2, PS3, 360, DS)

NBA Live 2010 (360, PS3)

Saw (PS3, 360)

DVDs

The Wizard of Oz 70th Anniversary Edition

Monsters vs. Aliens

How I Met Your Mother Season Four

Superman/Batman: Public Enemies

Life on Mars Complete Series

The Unit Season Four

Away We Go

Masters of the Universe (2002) Complete Series

Labyrinth (Blu Ray)

The Dark Crystal (Blu Ray)

Video Games

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (DS)

Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 (PS3)

Gran Turismo (PSP)

Dead Space Extraction (Wii)

Motorstorm: Artic Edge (PSP)

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (360, PS3)

DVDs

Observe and Report

30 Rock Season Three

Castle Season One

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Season Two

The Mentalist Season One

Battle for Terra

Wallace and Gromit Complete Collection

Star Trek: The Next Generation Movie Collection

Hot Fuzz (Blu Ray)

Shaun of the Dead (Blu Ray)

Gojira (Blu Ray)

Video Games

Halo 3: ODST (360)

TMNT: Smash Up (Wii)

Aion (PC)

Pinball Hall of Fame (360, PS3, PS2, Wii, PSP)

Where’s Waldo? (Wii, DS)

DVDs

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

The Big Bang Theory Season Two

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season Four

X-Men Volume 3 (4 also available)

Primeval Vol. 2 (Series 3)

Transformers Season 2, Vol. 1

Phantasm II

My Name is Earl Season 4

An American Werewolf in London (Blu Ray)

Army of Darkness Screwhead Edition

Van Helsing (Blu Ray)

Misery (Blu Ray)

Child’s Play (Blu Ray)

Hero (Blu Ray)

Video Games

Scribblenauts (DS)

Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story

Toy Story Mania (Wii)

Need for Speed: Shift (360, PS3)

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 (360, PS3, Wii, PS2, DS, PSP)

NHL 10 (360, PS3)

Wet (360, PS3)

Katamari Forever (PS3)

DVDs

The Office Season Five

Fringe Season One

Criminal Minds Season Four

Crank 2: High Voltage

Bedknobs and Broomsticks

Scream Trilogy

Parks and Recreation Season One

Goosebumps: Attack of the Jack O’Lanterns

Requiem for a Dream (Blu Ray)

Creepshow (Blu Ray)

The Quick and The Dead (Blu Ray)

Video Games

The Beatles: Rock Band (360, PS3, Wii)

Muramasa: The Demon Blade (Wii)

Dirt 2 (360, PS3)

Mini Ninjas (360, PS3, DS, Wii, PC)

Darkest of Days (360, PC)

DVDs:

Supernatural Season Four

Heroes Season 3

Rescue Me Season 5 Vol. 1

CSI Season Nine

State of Play

Disney’s Earth

Impact

Braveheart (Blu Ray)

Gladiator (Blu Ray)

Video Games

Guitar Hero 5 (PS3, 360, Wii, PS2)

Champions Online (PC)

Section 8 (360, PC)

Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny (PSP)

DVDs:

House Season Five

NCIS Season Six

Smallville Season Eight

Scrubs Season Eight

Duplicity

Sunshine Cleaning

Californication Season Two

Life Season Two

Adventureland

Lie To Me Season One

Fighting

Video Games:

Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3, 360, PC)

Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box (DS)

Dissidia Final Fantasy (PSP)

Metroid Prime Trilogy (Wii)

Raven Squad (360, PC)