As soon as I heard the genius behind the film Another Earth was involved in making another pseudo-science fiction movie I knew I had to see it immediately. Brit Marling is back with a film called Sound of My Voice about a woman, who may or may not be a time traveler, who gathers believers like a cultist. Fox Searchlight was gracious enough to let us into an early screening, read on to find out more about the movie and whether or not its worth a watch.

Ladies and gentlemen. We had the chance to see a sneak preview of the Lionsgate adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games this week. Should fans of the book series be concerned? Will audiences going in cold enjoy the film? Is the highly-publicized hype true? Read on to find out! 

Last year, I learned about The Art of Video Games, a six-month exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (opening today!). This made me sad, because I do not live on the East Coast and transporters haven’t been invented yet. The exhibition sets out “to explore the forty-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects and the creative use of new technologies” — in other words, everything I love in one neat little package. Sigh.

However, for those of us who can’t attend the exhibition in person, the next best thing is the companion book, The Art of Video Games: From Pac-Man to Mass Effect, written by curator Chris Melissinos, with images by Patrick O’Rourke. I was expecting a heroes gallery of the best and finest of the gaming world, but this book was oh-so-much more than that. The reader is taken through not just the chronology of digital design, but the gradual synthesis of visual art, music and narrative that has made games into forms of expression far greater than the sum of their parts. At 216 pages, half of which are illustrations with text overlays, this is an easily-consumable read. But that doesn’t mean that it’s light on content. The Art of Video Games is a thought-provoking combo punch of colorful imagery, insightful interviews, and artistic exploration.

Womanthology might no longer be the most successful comics project on Kickstarter (that honor goes to Rich Burlew‘s recent Order of the Stick project), but for 2011, it was the comics project with the biggest budget, and attracted endorsements and donor prizes from the likes of Neil Gaiman, Jim Lee, Gail Simone, Camilla D’Errico, Devin Grayson, Cat Staggs and Kevin Smith. The project reached its goal of $25k in less than a day, and wound up earning more than $100k in backer funds to print what was intended to be a small self-published run with the now quite interested IDW, the fifth largest comic publisher in the US.

For a project that started as a simple tweet from Renae De Liz and ballooned to a collaboration between more than a hundred female artists, writers, designers and editors, this might be considered enough. With the many faceted goal of showing that there are women in the comics industry, that there are women who read comics, that there are women who want to make comics, and that those three overlapping groups can work together to make more of themselves, that could have been the whole Inspirational Lifetime Movie Story.

But today we get the coda on that story: today, Womanthology: Heroic is available in comic stores and book shops around the country, with all proceeds going to GlobalGiving. Here’s our review:

(No spoilers beyond a bit of incidental dialogue and things seen in the trailers.)

So there I was, running across broken window ledges, trying to make my way to safety, while the world was ending around me. Every so often I would stop in awe and horror as the Earth I loved began to fall. Buildings crumbled. Swarms of Alliance fighter ships darted across the sky, raining gunfire upon the Reapers. Oh God, the Reapers. They were everywhere. Three years ago, it had taken an interspecies fleet to take just one of them down. And now, here they were, descending upon skyscrapers, laying our cities to waste.

I had warned them. I had warned the Council. I had warned the Alliance. No one listened. Now, it was too late. Earth was burning, and the galaxy would follow.

I snapped myself out of my daze and kept running. The Reapers’ foot soldiers were everywhere. Somehow, I pulled it together enough to carve a path through them with my pistol. I got to the shuttle. I was forced to leave as innocent civilians died below me. My heart was pounding. My eyes were watering. My stomach felt heavy.

And then the title screen came up. 

With the recent discovery of Kepler-22b (and others like it), it’s not really far fetched to start thinking about what life would be like on another planet similar to our Earth. But what if there were another planet out there that was identical to Earth in every way? Right down to there being another you. That is the premise of Another Earth, winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, but it’s also a lot more than that. Hit the jump for the trailer and my review.

When I got my magical package of retro cartridges several weeks ago, my initial instinct was to play through them chronologically. Makes sense, right? Maybe so, but my console-savvy friends talked me out of it. Super Mario was okay to start with, they said, but Mega Man 2? Bad idea, they said with shudders and sighs. Don’t do that to yourself. Get used to the controls. Get through the other stuff first. And when the time comes, drink some herbal tea. Maybe meditate.

I plowed through the other games, all the while keeping an eye on the cartridge whose very name had caused my friends to suck air through their teeth and drop their voices into a serious register. The cartridge stared at me, growing ever more ominous. The words of my friends haunted me. What was I getting myself into?

Editor’s Note: We had asked contributing writer Amanda LaPergola to review the movie Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 for our site. All we asked was that the review be submitted before all the other Breaking Dawn reviews came out.

As of press time we have still not heard from her.

Yesterday, a package arrived at The Mary Sue headquarters containing what appeared to be a note from Amanda’s mom (“Dear Miss Sue: Please excuse my daughter’s tardiness. She has been unable to complete the assignment due to the last five minutes of the mid-season finale of The Walking Dead.”) and the following pages. 

Let me begin with a brief psychology lesson, concerning the concept of “flow.” Flow describes a state of focus, energy, and personal fulfillment. People usually experience this sublime trifecta in conjunction with an enjoyable challenge – something that pushes them to the edges of their abilities while providing positive feedback. Flow produces feelings of success, optimism, and even joy. It’s one heck of a mental cocktail.

If you’re a gamer, you’re already well acquainted with the effects of flow. It’s that feeling you get when you clear a level without taking any damage, or when you get the killing blow in a boss fight. Game designers know all about flow. A good game will provide just enough of a challenge to keep you flowing without pushing you past the fine line of frustration.

I’m an unrepentant flow addict. This past week, I not only got my fix, but I scored a batch of the good stuff. It came to me by way of two little monkeys and a whole mess of bananas.

My first RPG ever was Final Fantasy VIII. A classmate handed me his copy at lunch one day. “Here, I think you’ll like this,” he said. And boy, did I ever. I played it through in one breathless gulp, and dove into FFVII right on its heels. I lost myself in those games. We’re talking weeks of strategizing and exploring. I made grinding guides, okay — color-coded sheets of graph paper compiling the amounts of mats necessary to upgrade all my weapons, then mapping a strategic tour of the world to gather what I needed in the most efficient way possible. Clearly, I was the coolest kid in school.

That was twelve years ago. I have not played another Final Fantasy title since. So when I popped in the Final Fantasy III cartridge last week, I was more than a little excited. After a few weeks of puzzles and platformers, I was eager for an immersive story to jump into. My imagination was primed and ready for capture.

But that’s not what happened at all.