Monday Links

-A few months ago, we were all pretty psyched about this documentary simply titled Babies. Well, here's the best review ever of Babies, coming to a theater near you very soon. You'll kill yourself from cuteness when it's over.

-Tom Ewing's "Poptimist" column this month is about the comic book, Phonogram, and surprise surprise, it's better than most real comics criticism. Flashbacks to Tom writing about Final Crisis and Secret Invasion awhile back.

-Nathan Williams, aka WAVVES, sometimes reviews video games for The Fader. Today, he dropped a review of Heavy Rain:

"Heavy Rain is unlike any other game I’ve ever played before. It’s a serious interactive movie and every action you make dictates how your personal story/Heavy Rain experience turns out. It starts a little slow, which makes room for the plot to actually set itself up, and at first all the menial tasks you have to do (rock a baby to sleep, grab dishes for your wife, play with your son) seem kind of boring. But that also sets up exactly how to control your character’s actions, which will be important later on when you’re fighting or in other high-stress situations, such as chopping off your own fingers with a rusty butcher knife. (Without context that won’t make much sense and I don’t want to give anything away so fuck an explanation, just play it and find out for yourself!)

Really, the driving element of Heavy Rain is the story (DUUUUH)—there are four characters and four possible endings, with the plotline based mostly around the lengths a father will go to to save his son. The actual story line is a little flat at points, falling somewhere between Saw II and Seven, but the objective is to eventually just see how it all turns out, like a movie. It’s pretty long for a movie, though, and for a video game it’s pretty short. It’s probably around six or so hours to beat? It took me two days, so it’s a pretty quick run. My girlfriend didn’t even mind watching me play it, because Heavy Rain connects with whomever is watching or playing. Minus a couple small plot holes, this game is a total banger and comes highly recommended accompanied with orange juice and a blunt."

-BEAT ELECTRIC is an awesome 80s R & B/Boogie/Disco blog I've been stealing a lot of music from lately.

-The new Future Islands album, In Evening Air comes out tomorrow, but some awesome motherfucker already scored one of the tracks to Dragon's Lair!