Tobar

Chewie is closely related to the Skywalkers!?! =O

Dark Shadows (2012)

I was iffy about seeing this but a couple of my friends kept putting off their seeing it until I could so I went ahead. It was an okay film. I've only seen a handful of episodes of the original but I do plan to keep watching. This film however I could have done without. Very weird hero in Johnny Depp's Barnabas Collins. We're supposed to root for him but he's frequently killing innocent people. The other thing that bothered me was how oversexualized the film was. With Depp sleeping with everyone and their making Chloë Grace Moretz character very slutty when she's barely 15 in real life. Just odd. I feel bad for fans of the real Dark Shadows.

Johnny Ringo said:

John Carter. Craptastic. 1 ball.

 

After a series of deep breaths....

Project X (1987)

My brother was visiting this week and while channel surfing we stumbled on WarGames. We were intrigued and I had remembered it was on Netflix so we decided to start from the beginning on there. Unfortunately it had been removed so we settled for what seemed like the next best thing: Project X. I had always thought this film had something to do with aliens. Probably should have studied the box art a little harder. =P But it turned out to be a decent film. We enjoyed it.

Earthquake (1974)

Continuing my tour through classic disaster films, the next stop was Earthquake. I must have had an interesting childhood, unsupervised at least. This was another film that while watching I was able to vaguely recall what's happening from some distant memory. It's a nice sturdy film. It stumbles here and there on convention but overall solid. Excellent miniature work throughout as well as composting. Some questionable use of practical effects here and there but they don't really detract from the film. Interesting cast with an even more interesting cameo by Walter Matthau as a drunk pimp. Ô_o

Yeah I love the control room graphics, I feel like the spinning circle in the background might be going a little fast but that might be because it's new. I'm with the others though about the meditation room display. It just feels unneeded and superfluous. It's also unprecedented. In no other instance where a view screen is used (ROTJ, TPM) has there ever been an overlay on the screen. The other thing that's odd about is the design of the display. It feels very sleek and...prequelish. Not boxy and retroish like you'd expect an OT display to be.

Anyway, I loved everything else in the clip from the new establishing shots to the quick glimpse of the transport leaving the hangar. Fantastic stuff. =D

Yeah the terminals were interesting. It's kind of an odd experience for a first time player to come across one of those and suddenly be flooded (no pun =P) with all this exposition on lore you're not familiar with. Unfortunately I didn't find all of them but my brother who was visiting for the week loved Halo and he was great with finding all of them so the ones I missed I now know where they are. Skulls were an entirely different matter. During my whole playthrough I only found one and he didn't find any. =P

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary

The only Halo game I had played before now was Halo 3. I didn't really know anything about it and even now can't really remember what the whole story was about but I remembered it was fun. I would always keep hearing about how great Halo was so I decided to play through the entire series. It helps that for some reason I've suddenly become quite interested in military Scifi. Can probably blame Mass Effect for that.

So anyway, I found a sweet deal on the new Anniversary edition of the original Halo and got it. Game only came out in November but I got it for a steal. It's the original game running on the original engine but has been updated graphically on par with today's console titles. They also went ahead and redid the soundtrack with a live orchestra and redid the sound effects. What's awesome is you can switch between the games original graphics and the new ones on the fly. Anyway, now that I've actually played Halo I can see what everyone's been talking about. It was a real blast and it's crazy to think it first came out almost 11 years ago.

So now that I'm sold on the franchise I went ahead and started looking around for a good deal on the sequel. And I was able to snag this for $5 bucks off some dude on craigslist. Complete and in fantastic condition! Probably start on that once I've finished AvP.

Yup he's also the one that brought Lucasarts to Steam.

Tales of Monkey Island came about because the then president of Lucasarts Darrell Rodriguez was a big fan of the classic Lucasarts adventure games. He had a real passion for the business and was actively working on bringing Lucasarts back to the forefront of gaming. That is until he "resigned" (got canned) and replaced with a man who axed everything they had been working on except for SWTOR. The company currently has no interest in its roots.

CP3S said:

As for Monkey Island, we need to get Ron Gilbert interested in a kickstarter for his original vision of Monkey Island 3. Complete with old graphics and all (I am so tired of hearing about this kickstarter fad, everybody and everything has a kickstarter now and it is all anyone talks about. Maybe it is a good idea, maybe good things will come of this. It just seems everyone has become true believers in this, and it is still too early for anything to have come from any of it). 

While that is my dream I don't see that happening under Lucasarts current regime. Ron doesn't own any of the rights to Monkey Island and Lucasarts has a general policy of never selling the rights to any of their properties period. Of course there's always the hope that another Darrell Rodriguez will come along as president but I'm not holding my breath. =(

As for Kickstarter, it has already proven itself. 10 percent of the films at the last Sundance were Kickstarter projects. If you funded the Double Fine Adventure project you'd see all of the awesome progress that's being made with that. Kickstarter is awesome and is helping bring about projects that I'd love to see but the bigwigs have no interest in (Space Command).

It was more ludicrous when I was the only donor. =P

Well since we're pushing Kickstarter stuff in here now. I guess I'll go ahead and post about a couple.

First is from Stacy Davidson, creator of the Han Solo Adventures. He's looking for funds to start work on his first official game for his new studio Warbird Games. It's gonna be a classic point and click adventure game set in a Edgar Rice Burroughsesque scifi universe (awesome). Check it out!

Second, is for Sierra fans. The creators of Space Quest are back and wanna make a new game. I've only ever played the first King's Quest but Space Quest looks interesting. Check it out.

If you'd like to spend more time with George then check out this almost hour long interview! Somewhat surprising response from George at 38:17. First he goes into the cold blooded killer malarkey but then ends it with "He did shoot first!" Who was the he? Hmm....

Happy Birthday!

A vs SW

I went out of my way to find a copy of the theatrical version of Alien because I kept hearing about how the director's cut wasn't actually a director's cut and how it was actually shorter than the theatrical version and that the only new thing about it was a quick shot of an alien egg hatching.

twister111 said:

That actually looks pretty cool!

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A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Fantastic book! Looking forward to reading the rest.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I had read up until they leave to start the games before I saw the film on opening night. Was disappointed when the film completely failed to realize various things plainly described in the book like the city. I finished the book after and thought it was decent. As has been said before about the mutant dogs....ugh.

The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison

Saw it mentioned a couple of times here. Haven't finished but it's been interesting so far.

Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)

Man, James Mason has one cool voice. Wonderful movie, I really enjoyed it.

Yes, yes. To tim you listen.

As for this:

SilverWook said:

Some of the pre-production art glimpsed on the Revenge of the Sith DVD does depict Anakin with a mohawk. Could someone have been inspired by the comic?

That looks like it was more inspired by the Droids animated series:

Which wouldn't be surprising seeing as quite a few things in the prequels seem to have been "inspired" by that show:

Boonta Speeder Race

Probably has something to do with the fact that Ben Burtt wrote for the series.

Star Wars Purist said:

You are right.  The dialogue from Star Wars (and Return of the Jedi) suggests that Luke's father/Anakin and Ben/Obi were equals rather than master-apprentice.

BEN: A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father. Now the Jedi are all but extinct. Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force.

BEN: When I first knew him, your father was already a great pilot. But I was amazed how strongly the Force was with him. I took it upon myself to train him as a Jedi. I thought that I could instruct him just as well as Yoda. I was wrong.

The Avengers (2012)

Spent the entire day yesterday at an Avengers marathon hosted by my local theater chain. The movie was amazing.

Bingowings said:

in Batman Forever there is some twit

Ewan McGregor describes filming his final scene in ROTS

For the life of me I couldn't find that thread before I made this. =P

Because why not?

The Great Flydini