From Boardgame News:
Nominees for the 2009 Spiel des Jahres – Germany’s “Game of the Year” award – and Kinderspiel des Jahres have been announced by the respective juries for those awards. The nominees for Spiel des Jahres, with their designers and German publishers listed, are:
Unless Reiner Knizia takes home his second consecutive SdJ, having won in 2008 for Keltis (Kosmos), some designer (or designers) will be hoisting the big red poppel for the first time when the winners are announced on June 29. In a sign of how far the U.S. game industry has advanced in recent years, two of this year’s nominees – Dominion and Pandemic – were developed by, respectively, Rio Grande Games and Z-Man Games, then published by German partners.
The SdJ jury sometimes issues special awards to games that fit into particular categories, and two such games received awards in 2009: Space Alert, by Vlaada Chvatil (Czech Games Edition) in the category of “new game worlds” and Gift Trap, by Nick Kellet (Heidelberger Spieleverlag) for “party games.”
The nominees for the Kinderspiel des Jahres, again with their designers and German publishers listed, are:
In addition to announcing the nominees, the juries for the two awards also offer a list of recommended titles, games appropriate for families and children but games that don’t have the broad appeal or broad availability of the nominees. The SdJ recommended list consists of the following titles:
And the recommended list of games for children includes the following:
As mentioned earlier, the winners of the two awards will be announced on June 29, 2009. Congrats to all the nominees!
[From Nominees for the 2009 Spiel des Jahres & Kinderspiel des Jahres]
Click this link to head over to Marvel.com and vote for your favorite five covers from the history of all Marvel Comics. Once all the votes have been cast, Marvel plans to reveal the top 70 covers of all time. My votes are pictured below, and I realize that some of them are not typical (no Kirby or Ditko? HERESY!) but I figured the Marvel icons would get plenty of votes, and I wanted some of my favorites to (maybe) show up in the top 70.
So what about you? What are your top five covers?
I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I have a love/hate thing about Neil Gaiman. Well….maybe not hate exactly, but not precisely like either. I have always been a huge fan of Gaiman’s Sandman work. The tales of Morpheus filled a void left in the wake of Alan Moore’s departure from mainstream comics. His writing was intelligent, mature, challenging, and (far moreso than Moore) full of joy. Naturally, then, I was thrilled when it became clear that Gaiman was shifting his focus to novels…and then I read them.
I started with Good Omens years ago and truly enjoyed it. The sense of humor was quirky and wry and the novel hit all of the right notes. Then I fell off the Gaiman bandwagon and didn’t read much by him at all. I saw the novels on the shelves, and they seemed interesting, but for whatever reason I just didn’t follow through.
Then, about two years ago I gave in and read American Gods, expecting to be overwhelmed by a vast epic and Gaiman’s lilting prose style. Alas, it didn’t happen. It felt…stilted…and stiff…and formal…and……..well, you get the idea. The ideas were spectacular, and some of the narration was sound, but characterization and dialogue were just plain flat. It felt like reading a plot summary of a much larger work – one that quite possibly required a substantial number of illustrations. It felt empty, somehow, in a way that Gaiman’s writing for comics never had.
I’ve since only read one other novel by Neil Gaiman – the soon-to-be-released-as-animated-film Coraline – and found many of the same issues arise with that work as well, though admittedly on a smaller scale.
I say all of this, in true backhanded compliment fashion, to congratulate Neil on his recent Newbery Medal for The Graveyard Book. I promise to give another novel a spin, Neil, and it will probably be this one.
via Splash Page
Neil Gaiman, the prolific multimedia scribe who we’ve been mentioning quite a bit lately in reference to the upcoming 3D animated adaptation of his novel “Coraline,” has been awarded the John Newbery Medal — one of the most prestiguous awards for children literature — by the American Library Association. Gaiman received the award for his recently published story “The Graveyard Book,” about a boy raised by ghosts.
The recipient of the award, announced today by the Association for Library Service to Children (a division of the ALA), is judged to have provided the year’s “most outstanding contribution to children’s literature.”
“A child named Nobody, an assassin, a graveyard and the dead are the perfect combination in this deliciously creepy tale, which is sometimes humorous, sometimes haunting and sometimes surprising,” said Newbery Committee Chair Rose V. Treviño of “The Graveyard Book.”
Previously, we brought you the news that Gaiman was planning a live-action movie based on “Graveyard Book.” Gaiman also weighed in on the line of “Graveyard Book” perfumes based on the story and produced by Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab.
Have you read “Graveyard Book”? Let us know what you think about the book — and this award — in the comment section!
The lil’ graphic novel that could, Persepolis, continues its auspicious climb into the mainstream with the latest news that the film version has received an Academy Award nomination. Whether it wins or not is immaterial…. this is just good news for indie comics and graphic novels in general.
Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnoud’s Persepolis, based on Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novels, has been nominated for an Academy Award for Animated Feature Film.
The nominations were announced this morning in Los Angeles.
Persepolis is competing against Ratatouille and Surf’s Up.
The 80th annual Academy Awards ceremony is scheduled for Feb. 24, but is in danger of being canceled by the writers’ strike.
A full list of nominees can be found here.
Persepolis nominated for Academy Award
Kevin Melrose
Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:22:37 GMT