Week in Review: Kicking Back With Our Gat and Taking a Look at the Week That Was

In a week when Grand Theft Auto IV eclipsed pretty much everything else in the universe, what poor pop-culture subjects were run off the road and riddled with bullets? Let’s take a look at the carnage of a week on Vulture.

First, GTA IV took on heavyweight contender Iron Man and, in four bitter rounds, pounded him into submission. (Although as it seems Samuel L. Jackson may show up, the fight could go on a few more rounds.)

Our Q&As with Rockstar VP Dan Houser and art director Aaron Garbut took a machete to the plentiful other interviews we had this week, including Christine Baranski, Robyn, Portishead, Bobby Valentine, actor Andrew Garfield, director José Padilha, and dancer Desmond Richards. Boxer Kassim Ouma fought them to a draw.

Grand Theft Auto IV was also directly responsible for the utter destruction this week of the following: Girlfriend Flicks, The Lovely Bones, Mudcrutch, and The Office spinoff. Not to mention fiction writer James Frey, Dusty-portrayer Nicole Kidman, aspiring actor Salman Rushdie, threesome-nixer Woody Allen, commencement speaker Jerry Springer, wizard Antonin Scalia, Wizard-disser Jay-Z, shoulder-barer Miley Cyrus, M.I.A.-replacer Santogold, and Philip Seymour Hoffman non-insulter Heath Ledger. Spike Jonze, however, is not yet fired.

American Idol put up a good fight — between Neil Diamond, Paula telling the future, and Paula explaining everything away — but eventually that show, too, fell to the might of Grand Theft Auto.

But let’s be honest: How much of a chance did anything have against the sweet liberty and sweeter violence of GTA IV? The game cut down critics like wheat, and even waged a full-scale assault on the New York cultural scene. But eventually, GTA IV will fade away, and we’ll get excited about other things again. Now if you’ll pardon us, we only have 63 hours to play the game before we have to return to work.