Rec Room

West coasting

Is Project Runway walking in circles?
As I watched this season's 16 Project Runway hopefuls squinting into the setting sun during their champagne reception atop the Title Guarantee Building in Los Angeles, it was hard not to view the scene as a sad little metaphor for the state of the show. What's supposed to feel like the beginning of something new sure looks a lot more like the end of something old.

By MICHAEL BRODEUR | August 26, 2009

Crossword: ''From A to B''

It's a short trip
It's a short trip

By MATT JONES | August 19, 2009

Our Don Drapers, Ourselves

The Mad Men mystique
This Sunday is the premiere of the third season of Mad Men (AMC, 10 pm), the Emmy-winning show that made fans of good television have to figure out where AMC was on their basic-cable schedules.

By GUSTAVO TURNER | August 12, 2009

Going streaking

Snapping out of the annual NFL training-camp lull. Plus, Plaxico Burress gets his.
It has been an unusually quiet week or so in sports crime, which is perhaps not unexpected, since this is the one time of year when the most arrest-prone class of athletes in America — NFL players — are sequestered in training camps and usually too dog-tired from two-a-days and running suicides to bother to punch out bar skanks or kick in police cruiser windows.

By MATT TAIBBI | August 12, 2009

Review: 'Splosion Man

Blowing up Xbox Live Arcade
Perhaps no platform has more consistently delivered solid indie titles than the Xbox 360, whose Live Arcade now offers hundreds of selections, from high-definition updates of the classics to forward-thinking boutique games.

By MITCH KRPATA | August 11, 2009

Crossword: ''No ham for me, thanks''

Don't be a pig about it
Don't be a pig about it

By MATT JONES | August 13, 2009

Stopping Traffic

The Fighting Sioux clean out the garage. Plus, quincy carter continues his slide.
North Dakota might not be the first place you think of when it comes to sports crime, but if the players up there maintain their recent pace, we might soon be listing the University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux alongside such infamous programs as the University of Miami Hurricanes and the Florida State University Seminoles.

By MATT TAIBBI | August 05, 2009

Mr. Peepers in Mumbai

Can Chris Kattan be a Bollywood Hero?
Here's something Chris Kattan probably rarely hears in real life: "In Night at the Roxbury, you were awesome!" Such, however, is the encomium proffered by two young Indian fans toward the beginning of IFC's somewhat random but not altogether terrible new mini-series Bollywood Hero .

By MIKE MILIARD | August 05, 2009

Review: The Bigs 2

Swing and a miss
The makers of The Bigs 2 seem to have confused simplifying the sport with dumbing

By MITCH KRPATA | July 29, 2009

Review: Tales of Monkey Island

A classic series sets sail once more
Thanks to Telltale Games, we're now seeing remakes and revivals not only of the genre but of its most popular franchises. First was Telltale's successful episodic rebirth of Sam and Max . Now we get the first part of a new adventure based on the granddaddy of them all: The Secret of Monkey Island .

By MITCH KRPATA | July 21, 2009

Boys' life

Hung and Entourage measure success
The premise for HBO's new half-hour comedy Hung (Sundays at 10 pm) is so over-the-top as to be cringe-worthy: high school basketball coach Ray Drecker (Thomas Jane), divorced and broke, starts whoring himself to ladies on the basis of his giant schlong. I know: ugh.

By JON GARELICK | July 14, 2009

Review: Guitar Hero: Smash Hits

Guitar Hero does its greatest hits
When evaluating a new Guitar Hero — or any music-related game — it helps to picture a Venh Diagram consisting of three circles: "Good Songs," "Challenging Songs," and "Songs that are fun to play on plastic instruments."

By RYAN STEWART | July 13, 2009

Review: Ghostbusters: The Video Game

It has the tools, it has the talent
Call it fanboyism, call it a Pavlovian response, call it what you want — Ghostbusters: The Video Game made me smile.

By MITCH KRPATA | July 07, 2009

Review: Prototype

The gleeful excess of Prototype
Prototype is so awesome, it broke my PlayStation 3.

By MITCH KRPATA | June 30, 2009

Review: Red Faction: Guerrilla

Blast factory
It's strange, when you think about it, how unrealistic most video games are. Not in the sense that they feature superheroes and space mutants — that's easy to accept. But as they render their environments with increasing verisimilitude, it becomes harder and harder not to wonder why nothing ever gets damaged.

By MITCH KRPATA | June 23, 2009

Cry me an Old Man River

Balls, Pucks, and Monster Trucks
Readers of this column over the past two years (my mom and my Aunt Theresa, mostly) know that I rabidly support my alma mater's basketball team, the University of Memphis Tigers. This past April, our head coach John Calipari relinquished the Tiger reins to take over at Kentucky.

By RICK WORMWOOD | June 17, 2009