The Clone Wars has reached 100 episodes. Here's a video they put together to celebrate the occasion.
What are your thoughts on the show so far?
Personally, while it's faltered here and there overall it's been a fun ride and shows what the prequels could have been like if George had put in the effort.
Monsters Inc. 3D (2001)
As it has in the past, the 3D disappoints in this re-release. However the film is just as fantastic as it ever was. So it was a lot of fun to revisit it. As well as share it with a couple of people who had never seen it before. Looking forward to the forth coming prequel. (Never thought I'd ever hear myself saying that!)
Little Monsters (1989)
WOW this was bad. I've only seen this once before and I remembered liking it a lot. Must have been a long time ago. How was this film ever appealing to anyone? Howie Mandel is annoying as Maurice. That Fred Savage's character found any appeal in sabotaging other kids and making their lives miserable after he'd had the same done to him, just makes his character a complete d-bag. Probably took after his dad who was just terrible despite the couple of quick scenes where they try to make him somewhat redeemable.
Lastly, what is with that title? Sure some of the monsters were on the short side but most of them were adult size. So why the heck would they refer to them as little? Meh.
Bernie (2012)
I decided to check this out because I thought it was Jack Black's first serious role, not knowing that it was actually intended as a black comedy. It was very interesting. The best parts of the film though are the actual locals they interviewed that are spread throughout the film. A real bunch of characters. Oddly I think it ends on a great message.
Jack Reacher (2012)
I didn't really know what to expect going into this one. I had hoped it would at least be decent. Turned out pretty darn good. Very enjoyable.
No. If anything it would have to have been the presentation. I went in somewhat trepidatiously but hoping it'd be alright. It simply was not the case.
Some scenes looked fantastic and it almost felt like I was there but far too often the experience was jarring. I just don't know what the theater could have done to cause it. A lot of the scenes looked like they were being fastforwarded. It had nothing to do with my eyes. I play a lot of games and am used to higher framerates. You could tell the theater at large was seeing the same.
It also had nothing to do with the motion of the camera or action scenes. The Goblin chase sequence looked fantastic and the 3D was amazing as it felt like stuff was flying off the screen.
Not his style. Burtt invented actual Huttese for ROTJ. Even wrote a little book for the various Star Wars languages a few years ago. Now the jokers that have taken his place...
But the real problem isn't with the delivery but the dialog itself. The ANH Jabba is friendlier than the cutthroat ROTJ Jabba. Personally I've always liked how the radio drama repurposed that scene by replacing Jabba with his Mos Eisley contact Heater.
zombie84 said:
You'd think after the success of First Contact they'd put more thought and money into the follow-up than the two-hour TNG episode that Insurrection is.
Not to mention one they'd already done.
Nemesis....BLECH.
Django Unchained (2012)
Boy does Tarantino love his blood squibs. Very disturbing at times and really plays on the human need for vengeance. I also thought it was interesting how he felt the need to create a sympathetic German character after Inglorious Basterds. A fun film overall. Spike Lee is an idiot.
I highly recommend you check out the 1998 Les Misérables starring Liam Neeson. It's a direct adaption of the novel and is not a musical. Love that film.
Gremlins (1984)
My favorite Christmas movie. =)
Yeah I don't know how they did it but it creates the CD release that never was. Makes a talkie SoMI that can be played in ScummVM. It's very interesting, it's setup to use the original music but if you want you can use the SE music and even then you can also use the extended SE tracks as well.
Very well put together, the only odd things I've encountered is that the images are slightly soft compared to an original copy of the game but it's not noticeable while playing and I have a huge monitor. The other thing is that for the SE when you talk to the dog in the bar they added a close up screen and for some reason it's left in the ultimate talkie. Other than that it's fantastic.
Have you tried the ultimate talkie patch for SoMI? I've been replaying it and it's so cool being able to play with the original graphics but with the voice work from the SE.
CP3S said:
I think it is a poster, not that actual game box, which is really awesome! Not to say having the original box for the game wouldn't be pretty sweet too, but a full size MI movie poster is extremely cool. Rare (impossible?) to find game box art that gorgeous these days.
Yeah it's a 24 x 32 poster and thanks! It is a real tragedy about the state of box art these days. The fact that Ken Levine has to stoop to this is just sad. =(
As for playing the old Lucasarts adventure games there's a simply awesome utility called ScummVM. It allows you to play all of the old 2D Lucasarts adventure games on just about any open platform you can think of. PC, Android, iOS, Wii, Dreamcast etc. They all run perfectly too. I've been playing Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis on my phone for a while now. What's also nice about it is that it has expanded to support a number of non-Lucasarts adventure titles as well. As for old 3D adventures like the amazing Grim Fandango there's a new one called ResidualVM that was just released that allows you to play it on modern operating systems.
So I received this in the mail a few days ago:
The photo doesn't do it justice, in terms of quality or size. Thing is HUGE. Suffice it to say it's the best gift I've gotten in years.
zombie84 said:
Tobar, as a gaming fan those sound interesting, especially Indie Game. I want to see that film. On my tentative to-watch list.
If you haven't already, you should think about becoming a Slacker Backer for Double Fine's project. 2 Player Productions has released 7 episodes so far covering the development of the game. They're usually around 30 minutes long and detail what happened that month. It's extremely engrossing.
Minecraft: The Story of Mojang (2012)
I bought Minecraft very early on while it was still in beta and remain fascinated with it to this day. Suffice it to say I've been looking forward to this documentary for some time now. Especially since I backed the Doublefine Adventure Kickstarter and have seen the quality of 2 Player Productions videos.
It covered a long stretch of time and touched on a lot of the different aspects of the game and community. I just wish it had covered more. There were some pretty important things that they never discussed at all. Stuff like the mod community which is what I think has kept Minecraft so fresh to this day. As well as the whole Yogscast controversy right after Minecon was over. That was pretty big news at the time but it's completely ignored. Lastly, the biggest omission was never talking with or talking about C418! His music is a very iconic part of the game. But overall I really enjoyed it and look forward to more from 2 Player.
Indie Game: The Movie (2012)
I actually caught this on Netflix last week. This was another good documentary about games and the people behind them. I had no idea indie game developers were so neurotic but thinking about it, it makes sense. It was a really interesting peek into their world.
zombie84 said:
But to say having fewer people with guns would not affect the gun homicide rate is ridiculous.
Oh I think you're right there, look at Australia. Or the following:
More than 100 million handguns are owned in the United States primarily for self-defense, and 3.5 million people have permits to carry concealed handguns for protection. Recent analysis reveals “a great deal of self-defensive use of firearms” in the United States, “in fact, more defensive gun uses [by victims] than crimes committed with firearms.” It is little wonder that the
National Institute of Justice surveys among prison inmates find that large percentages report that their fear that a victim might be armed deterred them from confrontation crimes. “[T]he felons most frightened ‘about confronting an armed victim’ were those from states with the greatest relative number of privately owned firearms.” Conversely, robbery is highest in states that most restrict gun ownership.
Concomitantly, a series of studies by John Lott and his coauthor David Mustard conclude that the issuance of millions of permits to carry concealed handguns is associated with drastic declines in American homicide rates.
Ironically, to detail the American evidence for widespread defensive gun ownership’s deterrent value is also to raise questions about how applicable that evidence would be even to the other nations that have widespread gun ownership but low violence. There are no data for foreign nations comparable to the American data just discussed. Without such data, we cannot know whether millions of Norwegians own handguns and carry them for protection, thereby deterring Norwegian criminals from committing violent crimes. Nor can we know whether guns are commonly kept for defense in German homes and stores, thus preventing German criminals from robbing them.
Moreover, if the deterrent effect of gun ownership accounts for low violence rates in high gun ownership nations other than the United States, one wonders why that deterrent effect would be amplified there. Even with the drop in United States murder rates that Lott and Mustard attribute to the massive increase in gun carry licensing, the United States murder rate is still eight times higher than Norway’s—even though the U.S. has an almost 300% higher rate of gun ownership. That is consistent with the points made above. Murder rates are determined by socio-economic and cultural factors. In the United States, those factors include that the number of civilian-owned guns nearly equals the population—triple the ownership rate in even the highest European gun-ownership nations—and that vast numbers of guns are kept for personal defense. That is not a factor in other nations with comparatively high firearm ownership. High gun ownership may well be a factor in the recent drastic decline in American homicide. But even so, American homicide is driven by socio-economic and cultural factors that keep it far higher than the comparable rate of homicide in most European nations.
In sum, though many nations with widespread gun ownership have much lower murder rates than nations that severely restrict gun ownership, it would be simplistic to assume that at all times and in all places widespread gun ownership depresses violence by deterring many criminals into nonconfrontation crime. There is evidence that it does so in the United States, where defensive gun ownership is a substantial socio-cultural phenomenon. But the more plausible explanation for many nations having widespread gun ownership with low violence is that these nations never had high murder and violence rates and so never had occasion to enact severe anti-gun laws. On the other hand, in nations that have experienced high and rising violent crime rates, the legislative reaction has generally been to enact increasingly severe antigun laws. This is futile, for reducing gun ownership by the law?abiding citizenry—the only ones who obey gun laws—does not reduce violence or murder. The result is that high crime nations that ban guns to reduce crime end up having both high crime and stringent gun laws, while it appears that low crime nations that do not significantly restrict guns continue to have low violence rates.
Thus both sides of the gun prohibition debate are likely wrong in viewing the availability of guns as a major factor in the incidence of murder in any particular society. Though many people may still cling to that belief, the historical, geographic, and demographic evidence explored in this Article provides a clear admonishment. Whether gun availability is viewed as a cause or as a mere coincidence, the long term macrocosmic evidence is that gun ownership spread widely throughout societies consistently correlates with stable or declining murder rates. Whether causative or not, the consistent international pattern is that more guns equal less murder and other violent crime. Even if one is inclined to think that gun availability is an important factor, the available international data cannot be squared with the mantra that more guns equal more death and fewer guns equal less death. Rather, if firearms availability does matter, the data consistently show that the way it matters is that more guns equal less violent crime.
Harvard Law - Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide? pp. 671-673
There is nothing about this photo I don't love:
Obviously you've not bothered to read any of it. Or you'd be aware of titles like:
Agent of the Empire which is set very shortly before ANH and is about a James Bondesque Imperial spy.
Dark Times which is set between the two trilogies and lives up to its title.
Tales which was a compilation of various short stories of all kinds. From comedy to tragedy it explored every facet of the Star Wars galaxy.
Or even Knights of the Old Republic which dealt with a Jedi apprentice who was framed for the murder of his classmates by his masters.
Heck even the stuff that does deal with the Jedi vs. Sith conflict is excellently done as can be seen in Legacy. So before you try to tear something down why don't you try having some basic knowledge about the subject first.
Basically you hate J.R.R. Tolkien's Hobbit and wanted a prequel to Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy.
Ugh, I really hope that never happens. The writers over at Dark Horse have Star Wars DOWN. They've consistently been generating the best Star Wars content for years now.
Kotaku has always been a joke. You should stick to sites like Rock Paper Shotgun. Myself I've always trusted people like Adam Sessler for my gaming news.
Hey FanFiltration, clear out some PMs.