A Movie, A Book, A TV Show, And A Video Game All Went Into A Bar...

Mindless Self Entertainment
By James del Rosario

Hitman (movie on DVD, rated R)

If there was ever any movie based on a video game that missed its target further (which is slightly ironic considering the title), I’ve yet to meet it, and I hope I never will. Hitman the game involves you playing Agent 47, going around killing famous people, and you were scored by how well you executed the kill. The less people suspected and the more it looked like an accident, the more money you make. It appealed to the ninja side of me. Yet the movie incorporated every single action movie cliché, with Agent 47 being a reformed man who decides the organization he works for isn’t all it’s cut out to be. No! Bad Hollywood! While bad enough in itself, it didn’t even manage to make my action-junkie side happy. Terribly executed (notice the pun), this movie gains:
1 out of 5 ticket stubs

Vampire Rain (game for the XBox360, rated M)

It sounds promising at first—a stealth game where you are part of a secret organization that kills vampires under the cover of darkness. Stealth my butt. You can walk directly in front of the vampire you wish to kill and he won’t notice you have a gun pointed at his face for a full five seconds. And when he finally does, you die. Don’t bother shooting back, because you will die. There is no difficulty adjustment, and when you die, you start at the very beginning of the level. No matter what. The multiplayer is nothing but a gimmick, the controls are awkward and unnatural, the story is terrible, and the voice acting belongs to a made-for-TV movie. Like a stake through my vampire-loving heart, Vampire Rain gets:
150 out of 500 HP

Reaper (TV show on the CW17, rated TV-14)

Sam Oliver is a slacker because his parents never pushed him. They pushed his younger brother Kyle to be the best, but let Sam get away with anything. As a result, he’s dropped out of college, has a dead end job, and lives with his parents. On his 21st birthday, he finds out why his parents were so nice—they accidentally sold his soul to the devil before he was even born. Now Satan has given him the task of collecting souls that have escaped from hell. Relatively funny, the show isn’t bad, but it doesn’t stand out either. Reaper deserves a heaven-sent:
3 out of 5 TV remotes

I Am America (And So Can You!) (book by Stephen Colbert)

We all know Stephen Colbert from The Colbert Report (soft T’s, please) on Comedy Central. That is merely one side of him, which his new book fully extorts. Hilariously one-sided, his chapters range from “Family,” which essentially talks about his family, how they’re better and how we can be more like him, to “Religion,” where he exhorts Jews, gentiles, atheists, and Scientologists to jump on the “Jesus Train.” And much like his show’s segment, “The Word,” he has his own footnotes in the margins making fun of himself. But does it work? Though it’s a nice reminder of how stupid we all are at heart, the humor is sometimes either too forced or too clever, forcing me to go “Wait, what?” Not bad, Colbert, but not your best. I give I Am America (And So Can You):
3 ½ out of 5 letters