In this week’s FFWD Weekly is my article on Telefilm Canada’s Great Canadian Video Game Competition. I check in with the four finalists as they ready their prototypes for the jury. Everybody is remarkably relaxed.

Also in this issue are reviews of Spider-Man 3: and Super Paper Mario.

Read all about it over here.

My “Trigger Happy” column this week is an interview with Geoff Thomas, producer on Radical’s Scarface video game, about how his team used the gestural interface of the Wii to make becoming Tony much more real.

By grabbing your balls, flipping the bird, and using a chain saw to slice people up. Now that’s how to use motion sensing controls.

Also in this week’s Straight are my reviews of Rayman Raving Rabbids, Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz, and Red Steel.

C and I have been watching the BBC series Life on Mars, produced by the great Kudos who were also responsible for Spooks (retitled as MI-5 over here) and Hustle.

Because we’ve been blitzing on season one of the procedural, Bowie has wormed his way back onto the internal soundtrack with his song, for which the television program was named.

So two recommendations from me, today: first, get in on Life on Mars, and second, get nostalgic with a bit of classic Bowie.

Was listening to We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank while finishing up a script last night, so it’s no surprise that Modest Mouse was still with me this morning, just a few hours after I dropped off to sleep.

My internal alarm clock is as loud, it seems, as the internal stereo which plays the internal soundtrack, because even though I was up well into the night, I was still awake – albeit sleepy – at 6:00 a.m.

The nice thing about that, of course, is that it means I can justify having a nap later on in the day. If the fates allow.

This is not the song that was in my head in the middle of the night when I was up taking care of changing and burping and such.

I can’t quite remember what was roaming in my head in the dark, but it was an old Split Enz song, that I know, because I do remember thinking how cool it was to hear Neil Finn in my head after so long.

But by the time I rolled out of bed this morning, it was Stars, and the duet between Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan on this pop-y and playful song from their album, Heart.

“You think you’re so bad, but you’re just badly raised. You twisted and turned all the love that we made,” sings Millan.

The refrain? “Don’t walk away then turn and say, ‘I love you,’ anyway.”

Nice.