The game I’ve been working on since last summer has finally been announced for reals. It’s Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse, and it’s going to be out in April for PC, Mac, and the PlayStation Network (PS3).

The first episode is called The Penal Zone and it’s full of all the high-brow intellectual humor that the title implies. We’ve made a subtle shift to the puzzle-solving in this season: there’s a little bit less emphasis on using inventory items together and more emphasis on using Max’s new psychic powers and eventually, figuring out how they work together. The idea is that instead of a lot of random objects that have one specific use that you have to figure out, there’s a smaller set of powers that you can use in multiple places and multiple ways. I’ll be interested to see how people like it.

I already know how they’ll like the other change, which is all the improvements to the visuals. The artists did an obscene amount of work on the environments, characters, and character animation. Plus we got a bunch of lighting and rendering improvements, including real-time shadows.

Plus there’s an evil space gorilla named General Skun-ka’pe, you know, for the kids.

Check out the trailer in high definition because Telltaler Shaun Finney spent a lot of time on it and it came out really good and I’m not just saying that because he could kick me in the head without breaking a sweat. And then you can pre-order the whole season because really, you know you’re going to buy it anyway so why delay the inevitable?

For a while there, the recaps of “Lost” were the only thing keeping this weblog going. I haven’t had anything to say about Season 6 so far, and I was kind of hoping nobody would notice. There are three main reasons for that:

1. I haven’t had much free time.
2. The only character/actor I cared about any more left “Lost” for another series.
3. I don’t know what the hell is going on this season.

It bugs me to say “I don’t know what’s going on” because I get the creepy suspicion there’s some Echelon-style technology that some executive at ABC is using to scan the internet for “Lost” confusion and present a spreadsheet explaining exactly why the series should be dumbed down. I can’t think how else to explain the “pop-up videos” thing they do for the previous week’s rerun, which does nothing more than explain the scene that you just watched as you’re watching it. This is indeed a series that plays around with varying timelines and packs a ton of detail into each episode; that’s a big part of why people love it. And I’ve seen every episode of the series, and I still can’t remember all the details and side characters enough to pick up on all the call-backs and cameos (e.g. the “Always Sunny” guy was on “Lost” before, apparently). It’d be helpful to have something pop up and say “this guy appeared in season 3″ or “this is the book that was used in Juliet’s book club.” It’s not helpful to have something pop up and say “Claire is Jack’s half-sister!” or “Claire just killed a guy with an axe!”

But even though I’ve never been able to keep up with the details, I’ve at least been able to follow the meat of what was going on. And although the biggest complaint about the series has always been with how they withhold information, that’s also one of the best things about the series. (The other is the enormous range of reference material they draw from, including numbers stations and 70s science communes and horror fiction and introductory-level philosophy). They mastered the art of telling stories in parallel, and then went on to throw in a twist in subsequent seasons: the flashbacks turned into flash-forwards turned into outright time traveling.

With season 6, though, they’ve kind of broken it. Anybody could understand the concept of flashbacks to before they landed on the island. And the reveal of the flash-forwards was done with a brilliant season-end twist; we all started out the episode believing we were seeing more flashbacks, and then realized at the end of that episode that we’d jumped forward in time. And later, when they introduced the time traveling, there were a ton of complaints that the show had suddenly “gotten weird.” But it was easy enough to ask, “Where the heck have you been?” and point out that the show’s always been weird. Time traveling, I can handle, especially with weaselly Dr. Faraday (whose name I already had to look up, see above re: my faulty memory) acknowledging that that’s what’s going on.

Now, the big two remaining mysteries of the series, the only ones that we’re going to get real closure on, are: 1) Who are Jacob and the other guy, exactly? and 2) How do these flash-sideways connect to the ongoing storyline? Lindelof and Cuse have claimed, repeatedly, that we’re going to get answers to both questions, and I don’t doubt that. They also acknowledge that it’s a risky move, and it can be confusing, and that it’ll require patience, and that’s where I have a problem.

Not that it’s risky — I think a huge part of why the show is so successful is that they rarely let it get too conventional. Or that it’s confusing or requires patience — it’s too easy to counter with “they shouldn’t dumb the show down” or, if you prefer, “maybe you should go watch ‘NCIS’.” My problem is that it’s unnecessarily confusing; I think it’s withholding the wrong kind of information. When you strand people on an island and tell me that I’m going to have to wait to find out what the island is and why they’re there, that’s fine; I’m intrigued. When you hold out on the entire premise of the season, though, that’s where I just get annoyed, because I don’t have any context as to why I should care.

I make a habit of not reading too much of the online chatter on message boards or fansites, both because it tends to be kind of lame (that whole ARG that supposedly explained what the numbers were turned out to be a massive disappointment), and because I don’t care about the extraneous details and would rather let the show speak for itself. But this season, there’s a lot of stuff that’s relevant to the story that you can’t get just by watching the show. You’ve got to read interviews and watch extra-content videos, stuff that used to give an “extra dimension” to the show, but now is a prerequisite. In that Entertainment Weekly interview, they casually drop that alternate-Kate killed someone other than her stepfahter, which was revealed in some Comic-Con video. But then they claim that that’s not important. Well, yeah, guys, that’s pretty damn important if we’ve got any hope of making sense of what you’re expecting us to watch each week.

I’d seen a mention somewhere that they were refusing to call the flash-sideways an “alternate reality.” I took that to mean that it’s all part of one reality, that the bomb detonation had somehow rewritten history, and that the parallel storylines would converge in 2007. There’s a recurring theme of fate and determinism, so it seemed fitting that even wildly different histories could somehow play out to bring about the same events; e.g. even if Oceanic 815 hadn’t crashed, they all would’ve found themselves on that island somehow. It wasn’t until last week’s episode (“Sundown”) that suggested that wasn’t the case (Dogen’s story in the present conflicts with the version we saw at the piano recital), and then this week’s (“Dr. Linus”) all but confirms that’s not the case (Ben talks about stuff that happens in the “real” timeline that directly contradict things we saw in the “sideways” timeline).

So in short (too late): each week, they’re broadcasting 30 minutes of clean-up on a series, mixed in with 30 minutes of a different series that I don’t really care about. The clean-up sections are still “Lost”-style frustrating — did we really need to introduce yet another character who refuses to answer questions? Haven’t the castaways learned by now that if you ask somebody a question and they don’t answer, you punch them repeatedly until they answer? And what possible reason could there be for not just looking to see whose name was on number 108 in the lighthouse?

The other series would be like if Marvel had replaced their entire comic line with “What If?” stories. What if Jack had a son with his own daddy issues?! What if Rose worked at an employment agency?! What if Ben had been a history teacher?! You can’t tell me that I’m going to care about these things, later on; I need to care what’s going on right now, when I’m trying to make sense of the whole thing.

I will say this, though: Emile de Ravin has been really good in her limited appearances. Claire was always in the running for least interesting character on the island, but as it turns out, she plays kind-of-crazy really well.

A Serious Man is just a brilliant movie, that perfect combination of dialogue writing, cinematography, performance, and storytelling that only happens in movies by the Coen brothers. The fact it got passed over (as it were) at the Oscars is just more evidence of how Jews just can’t catch a break in Hollywood.

Or more likely, it’s evidence that not enough people watched it; this movie is a very tough sell. I can’t point fingers at anybody else, since I passed on seeing it in theaters, and I’ve let the Netflix disc sit on my table for a week as I dreaded having to watch it. I’m a huge fan of the Coen brothers, Miller’s Crossing is my favorite movie of all time, and if I were being honest with my list of favorite movies, it’d be full of their work. But “black comedy about a suburban Jewish physics professor in 1967 who’s besieged by personal and work problems” never called out to me as something I’d be excited to watch.

I’d imagined it as a more Hebrew version of The Man Who Wasn’t There, one of the only movies by the Coens that didn’t work for me at all. Instead, A Serious Man is a little bit like what you’d get if No Country for Old Men hadn’t taken itself so seriously. The latter movie was plodding, relentlessly bleak and humorless, but was brilliantly filmed and had a genius script. A Serious Man is plodding, bleak, brilliantly filmed and written, and very, very funny. Even to a total goy like me.

As soon as I finish watching a movie, I can’t help but check out the reviews. What’s remarkable about A Serious Man is that few of the reviews I’ve read — even the positive ones — seem to get it, or at least they’re not able to describe what makes it work. Every one trivializes it or diminishes it in some way, almost as if describing the thing out loud makes it lose its power. Scenes that work perfectly in the movie seem trite when described with a simple synopsis. Each of the characters can be described in a single sentence or even a short phrase, but doing that doesn’t explain how even the simplest and broadest character becomes more than just a caricature when combined with everything else. So I’m reluctant to say much about the movie for fear that it’d be like trying to describe a painting or a piece of music: you’ve got to see it for yourself.

I will say something about the negative reviews, though, because several of them are unintentionally hilarious.

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When Tim Burton’s new version of Alice in Wonderland was first announced, I heard a good bit of consternation — not quite outrage, but a pfsssh and a dismissal — spreading through the internets. And I was skeptical of how much of that consternation was genuine. I mean, let’s all be honest, internet: can anyone truthfully claim that Alice in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass is an unassailable childhood treasure? It’s most definitely and deservedly a classic, but claiming it as a favorite is like claiming a favorite fever dream. Not only have the stories been interpreted and re-interpreted over and over again, but the language and the key scenes and, most of all, John Tenniel’s illustrations have become so lodged into public awareness that there’s nothing you or Tim Burton or American McGee or Jefferson Airplane could possibly do to screw them up.

That’s basically all Alice in Wonderland is: some memorable scenes and characters; a few great nonsensical turns of phrase; and some fantastic, unforgettable imagery. Add in Johnny Depp and a soundtrack by Danny Elfman and you’ve got all the necessary components of a Tim Burton movie. He’s practically spent his entire career looking for an excuse to string together a bunch of weird images without regard to a coherent story; Alice in Wonderland is such a perfect match that the only surprising thing is that he didn’t already do it years ago.

They still made a token attempt to provide some kind of continuity to the movie, so a story occasionally asserts itself. It’s not a particularly interesting story — it’s just a straight line from a rabbit hole to the Jabberwocky — but it’s more substantial than just the “a bunch of weird stuff happens and it looks cool” story of the Disney animated version.

Unfortunately, even a marginally substantial story is not Alice in Wonderland, which was, intentionally and happily, a bunch of clever nonsense. This movie is a version of Alice that’s been Peter Panified and Narniated. Now Alice is 19 and runs after the white rabbit to escape the demands of Proper Society, and she finds herself in the dreamworld of her childhood, where she has to find the vorpal sword and become the Champion of the White Queen to defeat the Jabberwock. (So I suppose the story’s been Wizard of Ozzed as well). The original seems like a dream a little girl in England in the 1800s might have; the new version seems like a dream a Hollywood executive who’d just fallen asleep watching a bunch of big-budget children’s movies back to back might have.

But again, you don’t go into Alice in Wonderland expecting a solid story, and you definitely don’t go into a Tim Burton movie expecting a solid story. It’s all about the imagery, and the movie does a fine job. I can’t imagine wanting to see it in 2D, since the whole thing is pure spectacle and you want to pile on as much gimmickry as you can. And the 3D is done well, as are all the animation and effects. There are more talking animals than a compilation reel of Superbowl commercials, and that’s just the “base level” of effects work going on. They’ve got a main character who changes size randomly throughout the movie, and almost every other character is digitally manipulated in one way or another. And then, they throw them all together in the same shot just because they can. So you end up with Giant Alice sitting down next to a table held up by monkeys while an animated pig lies down at the feet of the tiny body/digitally-enlarged head of Helena Bonham Carter while Crispin Glover walks in on digitally-lengthened legs (watch out, David Letterman) and kisses her hand. It’s really just an excuse for the effects guys to show off.

Which is the other big problem with the movie. The backdrops and costumes are impeccably done, and the look of the main characters is imaginative and memorable, and it’s the job of the effects to take all these disparate fantastic things and combine them with live actors to make them look real. Which means: it probably cost them as much money as I make in a year to make the shot where the Red Knight kisses the hand of the Red Queen, but that moment was pretty inconsequential to the rest of the movie. The same goes for the shots of Alice riding the back of the Bandersnatch (oh yeah, it got Never Ending Storied, too), or fighting the Jabberwock, both of which ended up being fairly straightforward fantasy movie monsters. Alice in Prince Caspian armor is a much more interesting and memorable image than the fantastic things she’s interacting with.

And there aren’t enough new fantastic things to interact with. Everything becomes either a main character or a major plot point, and is referenced repeatedly — there’s an awful lot of dialogue dedicated to how big the Red Queen’s head is, so I’m assuming that was the most expensive and difficult effect in the movie. Apart from a couple of rocking-horseflies early in the movie, there’s not much that exists just for its own sake. There’s not quite enough wonder in Wonderland.

While the movie and the marketing materials are desperate to convince you otherwise, the Mad Hatter and the Red Queen aren’t the standout characters of the movie. That would be the Cheshire Cat, and Alice herself. The Cheshire Cat has a great design, is full of little flourishes in the animation (my favorite is how he kneads the Mad Hatter’s hat, as a cat would), and almost imperceptibly solid voice work from Stephen Fry. I picked up on Alan Rickman’s and Christopher Lee’s voices immediately, but didn’t recognize Fry until the credits at the end. And Mia Wasikowska takes a pretty thankless part — Alice is kind of boring, to be honest — and keeps the audience’s attention and sympathy. Everybody else is fine, but they’re all trying a little to hard. You can always see the wheels turning: I am a highly-paid movie star who embraces quirky character roles and I will be the most distinctive thing in this scene, dammit!

In the end, I’d give it a “good but not great.” I enjoyed almost all of it as I was watching it, and I got my requisite amount of spectacle out of it. (Plus, there were 3D trailers for Toy Story 3 and Tron Legacy). I liked it more than the last few Tim Burton movies I’ve seen, and the last few Disney family blockbusters as well. There are several interesting images in there, and the overall design of the movie is beautiful, and there are enough small touches of dark humor to keep things moving, and there’s a tone of female empowerment that’s probably more healthy for little girls to be seeing than the typical Disney princesses. But more often than not, it feels more like a demo reel for a special effects house than like a timeless classic.

I have to wonder if it would’ve been more amazing if it’d just sprung up out of nowhere, and we hadn’t been bombarded with marketing images of the main characters for the past year. But then, I have to wonder if not having Disney’s marketing budget behind it, it would’ve been made at all.