Patrick R

Are games art? Well, you talk about them like art and they're expressive like art and they certainly contain a lot of art. But why does it matter if they fit a technical definition of art in the first place? Is Gone Home a game? Well you play it like a game and talk about it like a game and you solve puzzles in it like a game, and you get it from online retail spaces that sell games. But why does it matter if it fits the technical definition of a game in the first place? Because Semantics Rule Everything Around Me, SREAM, get the money, dolla dolla bill, y'all. Oh.

It's a lower-budget documentary, so it's not as flashy as King of Kong, but (true to it's title) it definitely taps into what makes that game so all-consuming via flow state. EDIT: Also, because it's both such a ubiquitous game and such a tiny competitive scene, the mix of people you get in the contest is crazy diverse.

Was not a fan of this. The choice to skip all investigation of game mechanics in favor of telling these people's stories felt like the wrong one, because they're honestly not that interesting people, apart from being lords of DOTA. The CGI animations were really embarrassing, and basically just looked like WoW commercials and were way more distancing than anything. Compared to other eSports/competitive gaming docs like King of Kong (which is the glossiest most over-the-top sports movie imaginable), Ecstasy of Order (which methodically dives deep into the nuances of NES Tetris) and The Smash Brothers series (which is breathtaking in it's comprehensiveness and small scale), it feels incredibly generic. I wasn't expecting all that much from this, but I was at least curious to see what a singular company like Valve's first dip into feature filmmaking would look like. Sadly, it just looks like marketing.

Sean has lately become what Jake was around episode 37-39 or so, a weird obstructionist playfully chaotic force, except you guys are all way better at podcasting now than then, so it's way more enjoyable. LOVED this episode. Wept that I wasn't able to record my voice track in time to get on that sweet new intro.

Can this forum do gifs as avatars?

Loved it. LOVED it.

The only bright side is that at least part of Idle Thumbs 150 will be spent on this. This feels like the same ballpark as a lot of robot news.

Yeah, reading the description in the newsletter, after so many hundreds of hours listening and re-listening to Idle Thumbs episodes, was like a rush of blood to the head. A real Keyser Soze moment. "Wyoming?!?...but that's...of course...Miasmata...Proteus...fire propagation...ah ha, oh yes...beautiful. Even more beautiful."

The part of my brain that is still 12 and secretly thinks that PS1 and 90's PC horror games are the scariest things ever really really wants to see this movie:

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! What Could Go Wrong didn't make it.

If you are at all interested in film history Peter Biskind's "Down and Dirty Pictures" is a brilliant look at the world of 90's independent film and it's arc from maverick filmmakers making splashes at Sundance to Miramax co-opting it into a mini-version of Hollywood. The characters aren't quite vivid as his book on 70's Hollywood, Easy Riders and Raging Bulls (frankly there just weren't enough drugs and crazy sex in the 90's) but it's fascinating nonetheless, especially when it's about an era you grew up in and can remember the films discussed coming out.

I've been lead to believe it's a Cuban thing. It's really good.

As a huge fan of slasher movies and a moderate fan of point n click adventure games, What Could Go Wrong is all I want in this world.

Jaw-dropping.

For me Majora's Mask will always be tied to Ben Drowned.

If you start again, I will.

Recorded my podcast's big end of year 2013 film episode. Here are my top 20 movies of the year: 1. Upstream Color 2. The Act of Killing 3. Computer Chess 4. Leviathan 5. Room 237 6. Berberian Sound Studio 7. The World's End 8. The Wolf of Wall Street 9. Frances Ha 10. Cutie and the Boxer 11. Inside Llewyn Davis 12. Her 13. Gravity 14. Blackfish 15. Stories We Tell 16. Nebraska 17. Spring Breakers 18. It's A Disaster 19. 2 Guns 20. Iron Man 3

I think The World's End isn't THAT much looser with it's genre parody than Hot Fuzz. Remember, Hot Fuzz is as much a secret society horror film as a cop parody.

http://steamcommunity.com/id/patrickr/

I bet when you go to KFC you eat the bones too.

Since the mythology stuff never really pans out, my advice is just to watch all the monster of the week episodes from S3-S6. If you're the kind of person who can't just watch part of a show (a TV completionist?) I'd honestly suggest not watching it, despite it being one of my favorite shows. Too much chafe. Only reason I could stomach the first two seasons in full is because I already had such affinity for the characters and world from cherry-picking the MotW episodes from seasons 3-6. There's a ton of amazing television there. Not many shows can claim to have an episode as good as Jose Chung's From Outer Space.

If you are into weird undefinable art films, 4 out of 5 of my favorite movies of 2013 (Upstream Color, Computer Chess, Berberian Sound Studio and Room 237) are now on Netflix Instant.

I probably played some games other than Spelunky this year.

I think something can be cliche and still great. Pauline Kael once wrote about director Robert Altman's skills, saying he was "able to transform fake poetry to real poetry". I think about that a lot with art. If I could say the theme of Gone Home is anything, it's about how the broad stories of our lives are made up of ephemeral details. And Gone Home gets those details so right. I don't read young adult fiction, but I can't imagine most have this level of subtlety and specificity. I do remember being a little disappointed that the storyline ended up being so cliche (mostly in it's resolution), and to an extent I still think it could have been better, but I wonder if that's not vital to the theme.

Happy Thanksgiving! Here's Regina and I's review of Pacific Rim! We didn't like it!