There were worse movies to come out this year, to be sure. But, like the Oscars they were created to mock, the Razzie Awards is just a yearly bit of fluff that picks their winners (or “winners”) based on mostly meaningless criteria. So let’s just sit back and have fun with it, yeah?

No, not that Cookie Monster. Though if any Sesame Street character were to fall off the rails into a life of crime, a heist to benefit the children of the word is exactly the sort of thing they’d do, no?

If you thought Adventure Time didn’t have enough serious adventuring, this should help. YouTube user Erin Stevenson recreated The Hobbit trailer using clips from the Cartoon Network series. And it works incredibly well. Can this be a new thing? I really need Lumpy Space Princess to be Smaug.

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Previously in The Hobbit

We were sitting down to peer review a plot— a peer review being the point where a plot has had its first writing pass completed, and whoever wrote it sits down with the other writers as well as representatives from cinematic design, editing, and level art to hear critique. We’ve all read it first, and written down our thoughts, and go around the table to relate any issues we encountered.

As it happened, most of the guys went first. Typical stuff— some stuff was good, some stuff needed work, etc. etc. Then one of the female writers went, and she brought up an issue. A big issue. It had to do with a sexual situation in the plot, which she explained could easily be interpreted as a form of rape. — David Gaider, in a post on his Tumblr.

This is two mere paragraphs from from Gaider’s post (whose writing on issues of representation in games we’ve highlighted before), which outlines precisely how having the input of people from a variety of cultural and societal backgrounds can reveal the unintended connotations of a story, even to the most well-intentioned writers.

Previously in Dragon Age

We here at The Mary Sue have a great appreciation for all things Martin Freeman. It made us extremely happy when the Sherlock star was cast as Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit and after seeing footage we can’t really picture anyone else in the role. Writer of the films, Philippa Boyens recently spoke about why Freeman was the actor they chose.

When it was revealed that the Obama administration provided information about the raid on and death of Osama bin Laden to director Kathryn Bigelow for the movie she was making about the event, some people found that a little weird to hear, even after the fact. Because, um, isn’t that information kind of on the extremely classified side? And doesn’t it look bad for a president to appear so “tight” with Hollywood during an election year? (I’ll continue laughing about that second one after writing this post.) Well, conservatives — who don’t believe anything Barack Obama does can ever be good to begin with — are up in arms over this seemingly “oversharey” exchange between the president and a Hollywood type. But make no mistake — they don’t care about Kathryn Bigelow. This is all about Obama. (WARNING: There are some politics in this post. All of you are entitled to your opinions about everything.)

It’s not every day you hear about a casting announcement and think “Why haven’t they thought of this before?” But that’s what we thought when we saw that Sigourney Weaver was set to play a divorced, former First Lady who becomes the Secretary of State. A role that is such a blatant fan-fiction/alternate universe version of Hillary Clinton, and no one is even bothering to deny it. Love it. Love it.

Be prepared, everything about this parody is perfect. I love The Lion King and I love Batman but I never imagined I’d see them together and certainly not like this. I don’t even know how or why YouTube user MovieMaestroTen (Brad Hansen) thought combine the two but we are so, so glad he did. I’m not ashamed to say Michael Caine doing the voice of Zazu almost made me lose it.

Watch and be amazed.

(via The Awesomer)

Big cats playing with empty pizza boxes, because this is the internet, and we can do things like this.

If you’re not American, this may come without any kind of context, but understand this: we have this holiday called Thanksgiving. Feel free to look it up and dig into it’s colonial origins, but the part of it that is most relevant to our discussion is that Macy’s, a national department store chain, throws a giant Thanksgiving parade in New York City. Famously, this parade has parade balloons. Usually of fictional characters, and in fact, getting your character as a balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is a measure of how your creation (or creations) has become a part of American culture.

And now you know why it’s cool that Tim Burton has designed a balloon for the 2011 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.