02 | August | 2013 | Through the Shattered Lens

If you’ve been reading this site for the past few years then you know that my favorite time of the year is Oscar season. I love the Oscars.

Unlike a lot of online film commentators, I don’t them all that seriously. Again, if you’ve been reading this site for a while, then you know exactly how I feel about a certain self-important (and self-described) awards diva who is fond of saying things like, “I know the game because I am the game.” You’ll never find me descending to that type of smugness. I’m a fan, not a wannabe insider.

The Oscars are a big, tacky spectacle and that’s why I like them. I let others worry about the political significance of why certain films win or lose. I let others deal in the dreary outrage over the fact that The King’s Speech beat The Social Network.

I just sit back and enjoy the silliness of it all.

So, as you can imagine, I’m excited because today saw that start of Oscar season! The Academy has announced who will host the ceremony in 2014 and the winner is…

Not Seth McFarlane!

Seriously, I get the feeling that’s it’s going to be a very long time before Seth is invited back to the Oscars.

I’m not a huge Seth McFarlane fan but I have to admit that I wasn’t as outraged by his Oscar hosting performance as some people were. Yes, the majority of his jokes were lame and borderline offensive. Yes, there was an undercurrent of misogyny to a lot of what he said and did.

But misogyny is pretty much the fuel that keeps Seth McFarlane’s career alive and that should have been obvious to anyone who has seen anything that McFarlane has ever been involved with. You have to wonder just what exactly the show’s producers were expecting when they picked McFarlane in the first place.

Regardless, after all the criticism that McFarlane generated, the show’s producers have decided to go in the exact opposite direction with next year’s host….

….Ellen Degeneres!

She’s an almost painfully predictable choice but, with the exception of that season she spent on American Idol, I like Ellen so I can’t complain about her getting to host the Oscars for the second time.

That said, I still think they should have given James Franco another shot…

…and kids will be playing it who weren’t even born yet the last time Capcom gave us any news about the status of the main series. Yes, some time next year Capcom will be releasing the first new major title in their petrified RPG blockbuster series since 2002. Western fans have no guarantees just yet–it was only announced for Japan–but there is at least some hope now that Ryu and Nina will be reborn in English once again. The announcement was made yesterday at Capcom’s Network Game Conference, and it’s hard to say just how excited we ought to be. An abandoned western fanbase has been dying for a decade to see classic RPG series likes Breath of Fire, Suikoden, and Final Fantasy reborn or in the latter case resuscitated, but that does not necessarily mean Capcom is going to see a western market or throw enough weight behind this game to effectively appeal to it. Breath of Fire did persist in Japan, like so many other former great franchises, in the form of low budget mobile game spinoffs, and if that remains the most lucrative outlet for JRPGs, then the significance of that 6 next to the title (as opposed to say, 4 Dragon of Ultimate Death 7 Quest Episode 3), might amount to little more than a half-hearted pitch to sell a few more copies. Breath of Fire 6 appears to be technologically bridging the gap between the mobile market and more sedentary gaming, with a touch screen mobile device interface that will also be designed to function on a PC as the same game–not a port–with transferable save states.

It will be worth keeping an eye in the months to follow on just how much Capcom markets this game. If they expect the 6 to sell itself and do little more to promote it, we probably shouldn’t expect (or even necessarily desire) a port. But if they make a big deal about it, then get excited, because I doubt they would put forth all of the necessary effort to create a legitimate, worthy installment to the Breath of Fire series and then forget to ship it overseas.