News

The Grand Theft Auto series has been criticized, more than once, for its treatment of women. This is a franchise where you used to be able to use hookers for a health boost, and then kill them to get your money back, after all. And Grand Theft Auto V has gotten lambasted for this treatment. But is that valid? First of all, the answer to the question is “Yes, to some degree.” But it’s important to sort what’s received wisdom in the video game industry versus what Rockstar was trying to achieve, artistically. Consider the overall artistic bent of the Grand Theft Auto series. All of the games since Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto V in particular, are concerned with shining a light on some of America’s worst tendencies. And, let’s be frank here, one of those worst tendencies is misogyny. For example, the character of Mary-Ann, who anchors some of the game’s side missions, is a biting and painful satire of body image issues and self-esteem. She’s torturing herself and beating herself up for not winning, and it’s telling that she relentlessly calls herself a “fat loser” and angrily insists she doesn’t care that she’s thirty-six and unmarried. By the end of her quest chain, you feel genuinely sorry for her; the overall perspective is of a woman broken by society who doesn’t even realize it. You find this reflected all throughout the game. Listen closely to the ads on the radio and you’ll hear plugs for a stripper night school trying to prey on the insecurities of housewives, and an ad aimed at women insisting that if you’re tired of thinking independently, you should get a lobotomy. They even compare it to liposuction. I somehow doubt Rockstar thinks women should lobotomize themselves, call me nuts. And sadly, a video game acknowledging misogyny even exists in the first place is uncommon enough it should be singled out for praise. That said, the women in the game are NPCs, and relatively minor ones, at that. You can seduce strippers, which is an at best questionable choice for a game and so utterly unnecessary to gameplay you wonder why it’s even an option. If GTA Online will allow us to play as female characters, why not have female characters in the story mode? And they’re not nice people, at all, either; the only female character who comes off as remotely likable is Franklin’s girlfriend Tenisha, who takes one look at where his life is going and, smartly, walks right out the door. She has a couple of scenes. That’s… not a good track record. It is fair to point out that in the Grand Theft Auto franchise, everyone’s a monster; selfish, self-involved, venal, and dangerous. That said, though, the question is really one of focus. There’s no particular reason that Michael’s wife Amanda couldn’t have been the bank robber, or that Michael’s daughter Tracey is constantly in skimpy clothing and is heavily implied to have gone into porn for the attention. Satire doesn’t go far enough to cover lazy writing and thinking, and it’s also fair to argue that the women in Grand Theft Auto V are lazily written and thought out, especially as they slip to the periphery; they’re not people, but types. In short, there is misogyny in Grand Theft Auto V, but it’s a mix of the intentional and the unintentional. One suspects that GTA Online is a feeler for having a female protagonist in the next game; one hopes that Rockstar takes a moment to ensure all its characters are well written.

This news is less than surprising, given our apparently bottomless lack of taste as a species; a gold iPad Mini might be on the way as part of the Mini refresh. And it’ll also have the amusingly useless nipple scanner…errr…Touch ID because why the hell not? The rumor comes courtesy a Chinese site called DoNews, which has a spotty track record when it comes to this stuff, but it’s not like they’re telling us something a large corporation that likes money wouldn’t do. And honestly, it makes sense. Apple likes its mobile devices to look fairly similar to each other. The iPad and the iPhone have generally mirrored one another in design, and the Mini followed the trend; as wrong as all the old jokes about an iPad being four iPhones duct-taped together turned out to be, both are unmistakably Apple products that are part of the same line. And the iPad Mini is staggeringly popular, to the point where it’s outselling the iPad. So, considering how quickly the gold iPhone sold out, to some degree it only makes financial sense to give the people what they want and sell a matching Mini. All that said, it does so far appear that the iPad line, at least, will be spared the indignity of becoming a prop for insecure people to try and tell you how wealthy they are, but since those people will just have the thing gold-plated anyway, we guess in the end it’s a wash.

Black Sabbath are no strangers to the macabre and the darker side of life but the band is taking it to a whole new level with their brand new ‘Black Sabbath: 13 3D’ maze. Having made its debut on Friday, Sept. 20 at the premiere of Universal Studios Hollywood’s Halloween Horror Nights event, the attraction pulls dark themes from the legendary band’s latest disc ’13′ and brings them to a whole new level of dastardly delights. Fans who can’t make it to California to check out the metal masterpiece can watch the five-minute walk-through above to get a feel for what the attraction has to offer. Based on the music of Sabbath’s ‘13’ the maze takes fans through a ghoulish landscape of doom and gloom covering graveyards, battlefields and madhouses – just to name a few. On the night that the maze opened, Black Sabbath’s Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler were on hand to accept their very own Eyegore awards. Eyegore awards recognize achievements in horror and sci-fi making the band a perfect match. Ozzy’s wife Sharon was there to introduce her husband, sharing, “the quintessential black magic of Black Sabbath comes together on ’13′ to create their most powerful, brilliantly disturbing album yet.” So whether you’re a Sabbath fan or just a fan of the horror genre, the ‘Black Sabbath:” 13:3D’ maze is sure to be a hair-raising, crowd-pleaser with quite an iconic soundtrack. Check out some of our exclusive photos from the maze below.

Together, Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl made history. Nirvana broke new ground with ‘Nevermind’ in 1991 and the living members of the band are currently celebrating the 20-year anniversary of the band’s follow-up effort, 1993′s ‘In Utero.’ In a new interview, Grohl speaks with Rolling Stone about his relationship with the late Kurt Cobain, revealing his final exchange with the singer. When asked about the early days and living together as a band, Grohl recalled, “Living with Kurt was funny. He isolated himself in a lot of ways, emotionally. But he had a genuine, sweet nature. He never intentionally made you feel uncomfortable. Living with him in that tiny apartment in Olympia, Washington, there was some sort of bond. But it was much different than his relationship with Krist.” Speaking about that bond, Grohl characterized it as something more kin than what he personally shared with Cobain. He explains, “I looked at Krist and Kurt as soulmates. The two had such a beautiful, unspoken understanding of each other. Those two guys, together, totally defined the Nirvana aesthetic. Every quirk, all the strange things that came from Nirvana came from Krist and Kurt.” An overdose in Rome nearly claimed Cobain’s life prior to his eventual 1994 death, and Grohl recalls his final conversation with his colleague and friend. He states, “I called Kurt after Rome. I said, ‘Hey, man, that really scared everybody. And I don’t want you to die.’ Then I saw him at our accountant’s office [in Seattle]. He was walking out as I was walking in. He smiled and said, ‘Hey, what’s up?’ And I said, ‘I’ll give you a call.’ And he said, ‘Okay.’” Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ album turns 22 today (Sept. 24), while the ‘In Utero’ 20th anniversary edition (available here) arrives in stores today after celebrating its official 20th anniversary over the weekend. Read the entire interview with Grohl at Rolling Stone.

Everyone’s favorite comedian Louis CK just won a Creative Arts Emmy (Emmy for short) for “Outstanding Writing In A Variety Special” for his HBO special “Oh My God.” The ginger-haired funnyman wasn’t at the award show itself, however. Probably because he’s kind of a badass like that and just didn’t want to show. Or it could be something like shingles. Perhaps it’s a combination of the two. THR made a note of CK’s absence. “Oh My God” was, as you may remember, pretty brilliant. Here’s his now-infamous closing bit, “Of Course But Maybe.”

After DC announced a new Harley Quinn series with writers Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti, they held a contest to let a fan draw a page for Harley Quinn #0. Unfortunately, one of the things they asked contestants to draw on spec was a scene depicting a naked Harley Quinn committing suicide: "Harley sitting naked in a bathtub with toasters, blow dryers, blenders, appliances all dangling above the bathtub and she has a cord that will release them all. We are watching the moment before the inevitable death. Her expression is one of “oh well, guess that’s it for me” and she has resigned herself to the moment that is going to happen." [DC's Open Talent Search] That artists were expected to draw sexualized violence of a woman before they could be considered for a job at DC caused just a wee bit of a kerfuffle, especially among people not familiar with the usual cartoon violence of the Harley Quinn character. This came to our attention last week when an epic rant about the contest went viral as f*ck with over 43,000 notes on Tumblr. Oh yeah, and this contest was announced right before National Suicide Prevention Week. The Mary Sue has an excellent recap of the blowout, but we’ll attempt to summarize. Jimmy Palmiotti responded that he should have included a “description of tone and dialogue” with the scene, adding that “it was supposed to be a dream sequence with Amanda and I talking to Harley and giving her a hard time. I should have also mentioned we were thinking a Mad magazine / Looney Tunes approach was what we were looking for.” He also said the fault didn’t lie with DC Comics for the lack of context with the suicide scene. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, American Psychiatric Association, and National Alliance on Mental Illness sent a statement to The Huffington Post stating their disappointment. Now DC Comics has responded to that statement, telling HuffPo: "The purpose of the talent search was to allow new artists an opportunity to draw a single page of a 20-page story. True to the nature of the character, the entire story is cartoony and over-the-top in tone, as Harley Quinn breaks the 4th Wall and satirizes the very scenes she appears in. DC Entertainment sincerely apologizes to anyone who may have found the page synopsis offensive and for not clearly providing the entire context of the scene within the full scope of the story." I’m still surprised that the backlash surprised DC. Did they not know that asking hopeful artists to depict a suicide, particularly the suicide of a naked woman, could piss people off? This should be a reminder that a diversity of backgrounds is something every workplace should have. Case in point, before the New 52 relaunch, 12% of DC’s creators were female. And after the relaunch? Only one percent female creators. Generally speaking, you’re going to have some serious blind spots and find yourself scrambling to make apologies after the fact if your creators are limited to 99% one gender or one race or one socioeconomic or geographic background, etc. And don’t be that guy who comments, “but women don’t read comics DURRRR” because they do and that guy sucks.

AMC, which cancelled The Killing last week, is losing Breaking Bad at the end of this month, and Mad Men next year, and still hasn’t found a viable replacement for either series (Low Winter Sun, sure as hell isn’t it), looks to be doing for The Walking Dead what the Saul Goodman spin-off is doing for Breaking Bad, which is to say: If you can’t succeed with new properties, just spin off the old. Indeed, AMC announced today that it is in the early stages of developing a spin-off to The Walking Dead, set for 2015. Details are scarce. Here’s what AMC had to say, according to TVLine. “Building on the success of the most popular show on television for adults 18-49 is literally a no-brainer,” said AMC prez Charlie Collier in a statement. “We look forward to working with Robert, Gale and Dave again as we develop an entirely new story and cast of characters. It’s a big world and we can’t wait to give fans another unforgettable view of the zombie apocalypse.” I wouldn’t call it a “no brainer,” since you’ll be diluting the power of the strongest series on the network, but for financial reasons, I see what they mean. Series creator Robert Kirkman added this: “After 10 years of writing the comic book series and being so close to the debut of our fourth, and in my opinion, best season of the TV series, I couldn’t be more thrilled about getting the chance to create a new corner of The Walking Dead universe. The opportunity to make a show that isn’t tethered by the events of the comic book, and is truly a blank page, has set my creativity racing.” We’ll bring you more details when they’re announced.

Jason Statham and James Franco have teamed up for a new thriller called Homefront, which is based on the best-selling novel by Chuck Logan. Sylvester Stallone wrote the script. We have our first look at the two actors today in a few photos that were released on USA Today. The story follows a DEA agent who moves to a small town after he's finished with his life fighting crime. As you might expect, once he moves to the small town he ends up fighting crime again. Director Gary Fleder talked about the film a little, explaining,

As the saga of Miley Cyrus’ strange obsession with twerking and becoming a hip hop star continues into what feels like its 100th year, not a lot of people have been asking perhaps the most important and interesting question: What does Billy Ray Cyrus think of all of this? According to Miley, dad couldn’t be happier and told her that he loved the whole foam finger, simulated doggystyle sex performance with Robin Thicke at the MTV VMAs last month, but that’s like me saying that my parents are proud of me for being a blogger. Singer Lionel Richie has a feeling that he knows what Billy Ray is going through, because his own daughter, Nicole Richie, was once a wild reality TV starlet and also a drug addict, but she has gone on to become a fashion icon and role model to all of the girls that she and Paris Hilton brainwashed for years. With that, Lionel offered Billy Ray a little advice.

Bruno Mars has been offered a much coveted opportunity to perform during the 2014 Super Bowl Halftime Show, and considering Beyonce‘s performance last year blacked out the entire stadium and reunited Destiny’s Child, he has some big shoes to fill. The NFL announced the news yesterday (September 8) on the show ‘FOX NFL Sunday’ just before the kick-off and teased that Mars would be making regular appearances throughout the football season to tell fans what he has in store. (Basically, it’s a giant ploy to get people who don’t watch football to watch football. Yeah, good luck with that.) “The Pepsi Super Bowl halftime show is the most-watched musical event of the year,” the NFL announced in a statistic-filled statement. “More than 110.5 million viewers in the U.S. watched last year’s show.” The 2014 Super Bowl game will take place at the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. on February 2. Make sure to tune in for the halftime show, the commercials, the food and alcohol with family and friends and, least importantly, the football.

Sort of lost in the excitement of Jon Stewart’s epic return to the Daily Show last night was the fact that he delivered a hilarious but poignant rant segment on the situation with Syria, a situation that increasingly points to war – despite the Obama White House’s insistence to not call it “war” – with each passing day. And what we’ve been told is the main justification for some form of military intervention in Syria is that its leader, Bashar al-Assad, has allegedly killed scores of his own people using chemical weapons. Gee, where have we heard that one before? (Note to authoritarian rulers: if you want to kill a bunch of your own citizens, do it with machetes and guns and other more conventional weaponry and there won’t be any trouble.) “You can’t use chemicals to kill your own people, you have to do it organically!” Stewart said. “America and the world want to make sure Assad only uses locally-sourced free long-range ordnance.” After playing a series of clips of the usual idiot cable news pundits insisting that by not bombing Syria — the secret motivation for which some naturally think has more to do with the Western world’s insatiable thirst for fossil fuels than it does with humanitarian efforts — Obama would look weak, Stewart reminded us that if the United States were a person it’d more often than not be a schoolyard bully, and one ravished with insecurity over having a little dick at that. “So given the fact that we have no idea who would have control over these chemical weapons in a failed Syria, remind us again why we have to do this?” Stewart asked. “Oh right, we have to bomb Syria because we’re in seventh grade. And the red line that they crossed is actually a dick-measuring ribbon.” Enjoy…

Wow, people are upset that Ben Affleck is going to be the next Batman. Like, really upset. It’s almost like this somehow simultaneously affects them personally (it doesn’t), and they have nothing else in their lives to worry about (we’re jealous). They may be upset about it, but at least some folks have a sense of humor about it. Here are some choice tweets on the subject.

In case you were wondering, Ridley Scott’s and Cormac McCarthy’s The Counselor still looks pretty ridiculously amazing. I know, I was also starting to worry that maybe the first trailer and clips were just an illusion and that I imagined the whole thing, but fortunately the international trailer was released this morning and now I feel a hell of a lot better. Javier Bardem still looks like your dad strung out on ecstasy in a mid-life crisis, while Brad Pitt is pretty intimidating as a long-haired cowboy. And Cameron Diaz looks better than she has in quite some time, probably because she’s being mean and I just love it when girls pretend like they don’t like me. “Here, have all of the money in my wallet,” I’ll say as she puts a cigarette out on my face. Anyway, enjoy the new international trailer.

Banning an IP range, the largest of banhammers, is the ultimate crowd control tool for most websites. If you’re enough of a douchebag on a site, they will essentially make it impossible for you to come back. Of course, you can just disguise your IP address and get a new account, right? Uh, nope. Not anymore. In fact, cloaking your IP address has been ruled a violation of the Computer Fraud And Abuse Act, meaning it’s a federal crime to spoof your IP for the purposes of visiting a site you’ve been banned from. This isn’t some piddling random law, either; it’s the law that basically dictates what theft is and isn’t on the Internet in the United States. You might be wondering how the hell the federal government came up with this decision. The answer lies, surprisingly, with Craigslist. Craigslist has been fighting sites like PadMapper that scrape the site for information, and blocked their IP address. PadMapper and similar sites just hid their IPs. But according to U.S. District Court Judge Charles R. Breyer… The law of trespass on private property provides a useful, if imperfect, analogy. Store owners open their doors to the public, but occasionally find it necessary to ban disruptive individuals from the premises. That trespass law has enforced those bans with criminal penalties has not, in the brick and mortar context, resulted in the doomsday scenarios predicted by 3Taps in the internet context.

Pearl Jam‘s love-hate relationship with making music videos is beginning to lean back toward “love.” After winning Best Video of the Year at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards for the stupidly controversial “Jeremy,” Pearl Jam asserted that they were done with the medium. To quote bassist Jeff Ament, “I don’t want people to remember our songs as videos.” (That sentiment lasted until 1998, although to be fair, “Do the Evolution” was entirely animated.) In 2002, five live performances of songs from Riot Act were filmed and released as videos, and the same thing happened again for cuts from Pearl Jam and Backspacer. The video for “Mind Your Manners,” a single from the band’s forthcoming Lightning Bolt, isn’t as conceptually interesting as “Jeremy,” but there are visual nods to September 11th, so…that’s something? Also, a lot of lightning. Who doesn’t love a bolt of lightning?

While all the adults are watching Breaking Bad this Sunday, the kids table will will be tuned into a very different program: The Newsroom. You know children, they can’t get enough dramatized hindsight and Sam Waterston. But once they’re done giggling at Alison Pill and her inability to act like a normal human being, because women, they’ll tune into the MTV Video Music Awards, for The Gaga, The Daft Punk, The Hippity Hop, and mostly, The *NSYNC. "Justin Timberlake and his former *NSYNC band members are set to reunite for a special performance on the VMAs Sunday night at the Barclays Center, sources tell Page Six. MTV announced that Timberlake, who topped the charts in the late ’90s with the band, will perform at the VMAs and receive the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award. But we’re told former bandmates J.C. Chasez, Lance Bass, Joey Fatone and Chris Kirkpatrick are scheduled to join him onstage for a reunion performance." --MTV news. It was nice of Manager Jerry to let Chris Kirkpatrick take a day off from his shift at Arby’s to attend the ceremony. He’ll just have to pull double sometime next week. Those toilets ain’t gonna un-clog themselves.

While you were busy mowing the lawn or teaching your kid how to throw a baseball like a total square, the cool kids in Seattle were all attending this year’s Hempfest over the weekend, in order to “advance the cause of Cannabis policy reform through education, while advancing the public image of the Cannabis advocate or enthusiast through example.” I think that means that they want people to take the legalization of marijuana debate more seriously and to stop thinking all pot smokers look like this guy. Another goal of Hempfest is to get pot smokers and public officials on the same page now that marijuana is legal in Washington, and the Seattle Police Department wanted to show that officers were capable of not harshing the buzz by handing out 1,000 bags of Doritos to people at the event, and each bag came with a reminder that exercising caution is a two-way game of hacky sack.

Who here’s read The Killing Joke? Uh huh, seeing a lot of hands. Okay now, who here remembers the part where Batman kills the Joker? You don’t? Well, maybe you just weren’t reading closely enough. Recently Scottish magician and dabbler in comic book writing, Grant Morrison, dropped the theory that Batman actually kills the Joker at the end of The Killing Joke. Don’t worry, no mystical mumbo jumbo or time-travel theories involved — Morrison’s scenario is actually pretty logical and convincing. Hit the jump to have your mind blown… Yeah, wow, okay — I don’t know if Batman killing Joker is actually what Alan Moore intended, but it’s pretty much a 100% valid reading of what we’re shown in The Killing Joke. For the record, here’s how the last page is described in Alan Moore’s script…

It all started innocently enough, with a Lady Gaga fan getting super excited that celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton was spotted in the lobby of Gaga’s apartment building. Until Lady Gaga took this news and freaked out, calling security and then raging against Hilton on Twitter in all caps, going so far to accuse him of stalking her. After learning that Hilton was in her lobby of her New York apartment building through a fan, Gaga called security, who took care of the situation. They confirmed to Mother Monster (who was in L.A. at the time) that it was in fact the gossipmonger on her doorstep. Which resulted in some angry — and since deleted – comments hurled Hilton’s way:

We live in a land of hyperbole. Everything either sucks or is the best thing ever. That’s why it’s important to keep things in perspective and temper overstatements. With that said, HOLY SH*T KENDRICK LAMAR JUST DROPPED ONE OF THE BEST RAP VERSES OF ALL TIME! Okay, seriously. K. Dot has asserted himself as one of the alpha dogs in rap and his latest verse on the unreleased “Control” from Big Sean’s upcoming Hall Of Fame only solidified that position. Kendrick Lamar is LeBron James. He’s head and shoulders above everyone else rapping at this very moment and it’s not even close. So when he drops a verse like he did here, it turns the rap world on its head. First, he declared himself the King of New York (he’s from Compton) then he dropped this gem: I’m usually homeboys with the same n*ggas im rhymin wit But this is hip hop and them n*ggas should know what time it is And that goes for Jermaine Cole, Big KRIT, Wale Pusha T, Meek Mill, A$AP Rocky, Drake Big Sean, Jay electron’, Tyler, Mac Miller I got love for you all but I’m tryna murder you n*ggas Tryna make sure your core fans never heard of you n*ggas They dont wanna hear not one more noun or verb from u n*ggas What is competition? I’m tryna raise the bar high Who tryna jump and get it? You better off tryna skydive Whoo. Yes. Kendrick namechecked every popular rapper in his age group and said he wanted to destroy them. In this day and age of chummy rappers and passive aggressiveness, KD rang off warning shots that he’s in a league of his own. Yes, this is the verse of the year and one of those iconic moments in Hip-Hop — scratch that, all of music — that you want to be a part of. So here, listen, absorb and enjoy the moment.

It happened. The notoriously anti-Internet Prince has joined Twitter (which may be a little confusing to those of you who thought the @PrinceTweets2u account was actually Prince). The musician started posting Tweets under the account of his band, 3rd Eye Girl last night, a spree that as Billboard points out was verified by Twitter’s Tatiana Grace. And in just a matter of a few hours, Prince touched on all the essentials of the social media: selfies, food pictures and memes. He also posted a snippet of a new 3rd Eye Girl song, “Groovy Potential” which-as the title suggests-is indeed very groovy. Listen to the preview below.

As a testament to just how deep the well of porn parody goes, the folks at Ben & Jerry’s recently had to file a lawsuit against North Hollywood adult film company Caballero Video because of a new series of adult films with names based on the iconic ice cream company’s flavors. The brass at Caballero, AKA Rodax Distributors Inc., agreed to a settlement with Ben & Jerry’s and agreed to not release any films under the previously planned and admittedly delicious “Ben & Cherry’s” titles. According to the Chicago Tribune, this was all about protecting the brand name and stopping someone from besmirching a wholesome company’s fine image. Ben & Jerry’s had said that Caballero didn’t have permission to reference Ben & Jerry’s or its trademarked ice cream flavors, which have names that the filmmakers evidently found to be a creative goldmine. Ben & Jerry’s flavor names include “Banana Split,” “Cherry Garcia” and “Everything But the…” — all of which became fodder for X-rated fare in Caballero’s hands. Caballero also used packaging that resembled Ben & Jerry’s well-known clouds and cows imagery.

The kind of people who take their iPad to the gym deserve the level of comeuppance that 4Chan and Reddit gave to an asshole who took pictures of his fellow gym rats and taunted them on Facebook. I know being forced to watch ESPN’s HOT SPORTS TAKES WITH SKIP BAYLESS EXCLAMATION POINT can be maddening, but c’mon dude. According to the Daily Dot, “An iPad-wielding Australian man has been banned from his local gym after he covertly captured photos of patrons working out…The unidentified jerk from Queensland, the second-largest state in Australia, was kicked out after 4chan and Reddit users posted screengrabs of the man’s Facebook activity.”