Battle of the biopics

Two very different biopics open this weekend-Cinderella Man & Lords of Dogtown. Cinderella Man is the latest shot at Oscar from the powerhouse assembly of Russel Crowe, Paul Giamatti, Renee Zelwegger, Ron Howard & Brian Grazer. It's about depression-era fighter Jim Braddock, who pulled off a miracle comeback in the boxing world. I expect it to be a fairly formulaic sports movie, but as long as it's done well, there's nothing wrong with that.
Lords of Dogtown is actually based off the documentary, Dogtown and the Z-boys, which featured a group of skaters that revolutionized the sport in the 70s and made it possible for guys like Tony Hawk to make a living off skateboarding. Skateboarding movies are usually pure garbage, although the superb directing ability of Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen) may make this the first one actually worth checking out (although critics seem to be saying otherwise so far).

The movie Serenity takes place 6 months after the last episode of Firefly that was made (this is another show I HIGHLY reccomend picking up, it's just a shame only 13 episodes were made). But a guy like Malcolm Reynolds can't possibly stay out of trouble that long, so if you want to know what happened between the end of the show and the start of the movie, Joss Whedon is making a short run (three issues, I think) comic that shows what adventures the crew of Serenity have in the mean time. I haven't read comics in over a decade, but I might pick these up if they are by some miracle able to capture the humor and spirit of the show.

I've already beaten Advent Rising on easy(that's right not even a full day!), so while I had fun, I wouldn't reccomend a purchase. It was a very fun 10-hour roller coaster(like most good action games these days), although admittedly the frame rate could've used a lot of smoothing out. But I can't wait for the next two entries as the story, cinemas and music were all top notch.

The big shocker of game news this week has been that the PS3 may not come with a hard drive. Now, if you want to just play games on it (like I will), it probably won't be a huge deal and like the PS2 you can probably pick up a rather inexpensive memory card of some sort. Unfortunately, the problem is that you won't be able to do all the things out of box the 360 can do with it's standard 20 gig hard drive (stream music, record videos, not have to buy memory cards in the first place), and I think Sony will probably charge a ridiculous price (just look at any decent storage device for the PSP, they are ridiculously overpriced).

All right, that's really I have for today, til next time....