Phoenix Wright: Jus­tice For All is very much like the orig­i­nal, but with a few added tricks. Released in North Amer­ica Jan­u­ary of 2007, Cur­rent fans sali­vated over the new game. Fea­tur­ing slightly improved graph­ics, - maybe I’m nuts but I don’t recall moving mouths in the first game - slightly better music, an expanded cast, and a new fea­ture to aggra­vate the player, Jus­tice For All pro­vides hours of enter­tain­ing Lawyer-y fun.

Over the Christ­mas hol­i­days, Theresa and I went to our local inde­pen­dent movie the­ater, and watched Juno. I have to say that it’s easily one of the best films I watched in 2007. It was sweet, funny, and potent in all the right spots.

The movie Juno is about one Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) and Paulie Bleeker (the ever master of awk­ward pauses, Michael Cera) and their joint child-​making. The movie takes place during the nine months of Juno’s won­der­ful adven­ture through preg­nancy, and her inter­ac­tion with the adop­tive couple Vanessa and Mark Loring (Jen­nifer Garner and Jason Bate­man).

Last night I had the for­tune to watch I Am Legend star­ing Will Smith. The premise of the movie is that Robert Neville (Will Smith) is the last man alive, after a deadly super-​virus lays waste to 90% of the worlds pop­u­la­tion. 1% of man kind had a nat­ural immu­nity to it, and 9%… well that’s some­thing else.

Beowulf is the newest adap­ta­tion do the epic poem of yore. It’s rather lib­eral with its inter­pre­ta­tion, and as near as I can tell, also adds new and unre­lated sec­tions to the plot.

I tried to watch this movie, and take it seri­ously. Hon­estly I did, and I am sorry to every­one who was around me who was also trying to watch the movie seri­ously. I didn’t mean to laugh at it so much, I really didn’t! But when a man is naked for over half of the film, has ques­tion­able (at best) dialog, and so much over the top fight­ing that a Die Hard fan would squeel with joy… well it’s just too much for me to try and take seriously.

I really wish I could find a good quote from this book, but I assure you that every one of them is offen­sive and far too vivid. I’m seri­ous in saying that this is the most blunt, graphic, degrad­ing, dis­gust­ing, non-​pornographic arti­cle I have ever read. The best part is that you can pick it up in Chap­ters. Right off the shelf. There isn’t even a dis­claimer, though I’m being totally truth­ful that anyone who lets a minor read this should be shot. Now having said that this book is either the equiv­a­lent of a har­le­quin novel for women, or the most subtly bril­liant thing I’ve read. To be honest, I think it’s both.

How to describe Dou­glas Coupland’s new novel “The Gum Thief?” I’m strug­gling for words here because I’m fairly sure I’d need too many, and prob­a­bly have to create a few just for the effect to truly sink in. I think I’ll go with ‘depressing and beautiful.’ It’s sad and its mag­i­cal. It’s bleak and its stun­ning, It’s a fire-y car crash between two mas­sive trucks car­ry­ing noth­ing but bright, floaty balloons.

I recently watched “Across the Universe,” a musi­cal that takes place in the 1960s involv­ing Jude (Jim Sturgess) as a dock worker who sets off from Liv­er­pool to find his father. Upon the sad and simple meet­ing of his estranged father, Jude befriends Max (Joe Ander­son) wherein he meets Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood).

The three migrate to New York to see where life takes them. Jude and Lucy hook up and are painfully in love. A lot of the movie is based entirely around their evolv­ing love; through their dizzy­ing highs (lit­er­ally in some cases) and depress­ing lows.