Culture: Gary Gygax Officially at -10 Hit Points

Gary Gygax, responsible for delaying the full onset of puberty in hundreds of thousands of teenage boys with the invention of the Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying game, died at the age of 69 on Tuesday. The game which he invented along with Dave Arneson, is said to have generated over a billion dollars in sales.

In a sense Dungeons and Dragons pioneered the "virtual world" that expanded greatly with the Internet and games like World of Warcraft.

Here's a scene from Judd Apatow's late, lamented genius TV show Freaks and Geeks in which the geeks initiate a freak into the wonders of D & D. As always if you are reading this on another site, follow the links back here to see the vid. If it doesn't play initially, hit refresh:

Movie News: Make it An All Apatow Summer -- Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Hey it's those two guys...and they're in Hawaii!

Judd Apatow has about 20 bajillion films coming out including Pineapple Express at the end of the Summer and Forgetting Sarah Marshall at the beginning in May. As you'll see from the trailer, Marshall (which coincidentally stars Apatow's former Freaks and Geek-ster Marshall from How I Met Your Mother) looks pretty darn good. Behold!

Film: Pineapple Express Preview

This clip brings back some seriously hazy memories. I'd say the research involved in the upcoming film Pineapple Express from the Judd Apatow hilarity machine was positively Method-like. Also, dig on James Franco getting deep into character. This is to Cheech and Chong's Nice Dreams as Tarantino's Death Proof was to Smokey and the Bandit II. The release date is a distant August 8th 2008 so hopefully memory loss will help keep this fresh. Inhale!

Movies: Superbad -- Vagina Dentata From the Black Lagoon

McLovin asks for a wrench about 'yea big' to pry him from the bootie monster

Superbad, the latest opus from the comedy colossus that is Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, The 40-Year Old Virgin) is a very, very funny film, though not without its flaws. Essentially this is a monster movie in a comedy guise. The monster? Woman, the she, the creature from Venus. Of course women aren't monsters and Superbad is aware of it's own silliness over all things female and genital. This self-awareness is what keeps it away from misogyny and safely in the comedy realm. Our would-be heroes, Seth and Evan, are fascinated by these mysterious beings, studying footage on the Internet even as they are disgusted by the more extreme examples of behavior they find there. Their plan, like Carl Denham in King Kong, is to lure the women and ply them with intoxicants for further study. Sounds creepy eh? But remember, in the world of Superbad it's the women who have the power. Seth and Evan's buddy Fogell is horrified by Officer Slater's (Bill Hader) tale of why women should not be met in bars, a story that is delivered by his partner (co-screenwriter and Knocked Up star Seth Rogan) with all the rueful malevolence of Quint in Jaws. When the monsters do strike the results are deadly and therefore hilarious. Jonah Hill (playing Seth) almost gets beaten to a pulp by a jealous boyfriend who senses, literally, blood in the water. Michael Cera (playing Evan) is pinned down by a girl who's transformation is nothing short of Dr. Jekyll. In the end, the body snatchers have won as both man-boys watch each other longingly depart in the keep of their new mistresses. Oh, but it is funny. Cera and Hill are perfect together -- Cera's underplaying and Hill's near hysteria working it like peanut butter and jelly. Christopher Mintz-Plasse does geek-chic like it's going out of style. Martha MacIsaac as Becca shows great comic chops and Emma Stone plays Jules with a winning throatiness that suggests a Kathleen Turner in training. The flaws I mentioned earlier? The pic is too long, chiefly because of one too many scenes with the cops. A good 15 minutes of Hader and Rogan could have been left on the floor. Other than that Superbad is ace, if not quite as good as Knocked Up.
Superbad rates 4 out 0f 5 Monsters:

"Knocked Up" a Knockout

Judd "40-Year Old Virgin" Apatow's new comedy Knocked Up cements the writer/director's winning streak and shows that he is one of the most creative comic minds working in the film industry today. The not-so-secret ingredient is a solid screenplay with set beats for each scene and for the film as a whole. When improv occurs, it feeds the plot and the characters and no scene feels like it hangs out there for the sake of a pointless gag (unlike Anchorman, a film Apotow produced but did not direct.) He keeps the rom sophisticated and the com raunchy until the lines between the two mean less and less.



Knocked Up stars Seth Rogen, a member in good standing of Apatow's informal troupe, as Ben Stone, slacker extraordinaire. He and his pot-smoking buddies don't work per se, they merely keep pushing an unlikely plan for a website that intends to chronicle in great detail when in a mainstream movie nudity occurs and whether that nudity is full or partial. He and his buddies allow Apatow to show off the kind of rapid-fire male camaraderie his films revel and excel in.



Rogen gets lucky one night with Alison Scott, an employee at E! who just made it to a coveted on-air position. Casting of Katherine Heigl as Scott is perfect. She's pretty and put together without being nasty, and she can be sweet without being a dumb-ass. She's way out of Rogen's league but you believe that they might be able to click.



As you've probably deduced from the title, that one night stand leads to a potential 9-month issue and Ben and Alison have to decide what to do and if they should try to build a relationship with each other just because Alison is in a family way.



Alison lives with her sister and brother-in-law, played to perfection by Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd. They are locked in a marriage full of tension, with two adorable kids and lots of free floating angst. Mann, the real-life Mrs. Apatow and a standout as Steve Carell's drunken pickup in 40-Year Old Virgin, nails her part. She is tough without being a shrew, and Rudd just floats around trying not to be hit by the verbal and emotional shrapnel.



If there is a weak spot its that Heigl's character is a little underdeveloped -- we never really know why she decides to keep the baby though her bitchy mother's (played with a blithe nastiness by Joanna Kerns) negative reaction ("Take care of it...") gives us a little hint. Speaking of parents, Harold Ramis is wonderful as Rogen's father, and the scenes with them sparkle with real feeling and humor.



Essentially it's the grounding in reality that allows Apatow's films to tickle us so hard, and there are several scenes here that play deadly serious, only to evolve into a laugh or vice-versa. That's a rare trick to get right and Knocked Up does it in spades, from bong hits to graphic birth. The funniest comedy of the year so far nets five out of five baby heads: