Bolegium

I was at a Death Grips gig last night, which was basically a thousand or so people moshing non-stop for an hour, so fucking good. I've also fallen deeply in love with Hiatus Kaiyote. A friend introduced me to them last year but I didn't really click to how great they are until recently, it was a sublime experience when I finally did. Also recently discovered Jacob Collier from a really amazing interview he did with June Lee, diving into music theory. The guy unbelievably is talented; he single-handedly "writes, arranges, records, produces and performs" all his music, and he just turned 23.

One thing I noticed was the return of the drum shuffle background music (when Dougie-Coop follows the coffee into the lift). Jacoby as an Alex Jones-style paranoid salesman was such a great payoff.

Do you mean Wild at Heart? I actually saw both movies recently, but my memory is a bit foggy. I didn't even remember a possible connection until you mentioned this.

Some great recent movies that haven't been mentioned here(?): Raw (Dir, Julia Ducournau) - a really intimate and empathic coming-of-age film about a young woman, got a lot of hype and marketing presenting it as a vomit-inducing horror film but it's way more than that. Get Out (Dir. Jordan Peele) - i'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned here as it seems to be a huge box office hit. It hit on so many mundane (as in ordinary and common) themes and situations that are terrifying and anxiety inducing. It's brilliantly constructed and acted, and so much fun to watch with an engaged audience. Colossal (Dir. Nacho Vigalondo) - MRAs probably hate this film and it has Kaijus in it. *Edit - Thanks to TychoCelchuuu below, I didn't search outside of the megathread!

The day-for-night-esque scene made me think of this bit of dialogue in Mulholland Drive: Side note: every unconvincing day for night colour grade in any movie makes me think of that quote.

Adding to what's already been said about the artificial looking visual effects, I don't think Lynch is concerned with realism or seamless blending at all, the imagery is usually supposed to be disturbing or shocking, and the jarring quality of the 'cheap' looking methods adds to that for me. It's another layer of discomfort and weirdness. When Sarah Palmer is watching the lions hunting water buffalo on TV, and the camera drifts in front of her with the mirror behind her, I swear there's a few frames where the camera is visible in the mirror. For some reason little weird things like that make me appreciate Lynch and Twin Peaks all the more. I haven't gone back to check whether it's really there and don't know if it's a mistake or deliberate and why. Lynch in a nutshell. Also I finally watched Inland Empire the night before the premiere of the new season and that prepared me for how slow and sparsely scored modern Lynch would be, and also scared the shit out of me.

Recently seen: Carol, Anomalisa, Room. Carol (the character and the movie) was so intoxicating, what a movie. Anomalisa was surprisingly funny, and visually gorgeous. Room was a tear-jerker, mostly because of the great acting, but also because of some really emotional music choices (almost distractingly so, given how familiar I am with the tracks in question). Short Term 12 is another great movie that Brie Larson is great in.

Just a general tip for everyone (and apologies if this has already been mentioned, or is super obvious): try out alternate solutions to puzzles you have already completed, or even deliberately try an incorrect solution (most puzzles with errors will flash red at the relevant parts). Sometimes the rules you've reasoned from correct solutions are incomplete, so more testing of hypotheses are required (inductive vs deductive reasoning). I've finished the game properly now, and my mind feels surprisingly clear.

So i'm about to buy, just wondering if there will be a release of the soundtrack on Bandcamp (like with Gone Home), and if that would be a better option than getting the soundtrack bundle on Steam?(E.g. greater variety of audio format options, etc.)

521 + 134 + 5. 43 hours played according to Steam (a few of those idling). Used pen and paper as a memorisation aid, and a video camera for a few puzzles. Big time tetris effect too, thinking about drawing lines in my sleep and even when awake, compulsively looking for/noticing "puzzle-like" elements in "real life". I forgot how to turn off my phone alarm one morning thanks to The Witness making me believe that I needed to trace out an elaborate path on my phone, instead of just swiping right to the "cancel alarm" icon. I haven't actually "ended" the game yet, but I think i've finally reached a mental state where I no longer feel compelled to complete/search for puzzles, and now feel free to do or not do so at my leisure.

I generally do like the "messiness" as well, and the tension of not knowing what part of the simulation is or isn't meaningful fits nicely with the themes of the rest of the game. I just feel like i'm actively ignoring a lot of the game, and wonder if a more stylised presentation would have made things feel less distracting to me. I don't think I explained my comparison with The Witness very well, since I agree with your feelings about clinically exacting environments, but consider The Witness to be the opposite of that. There's a lot of "fluff" in The Witness too, but the fluff has been designed in a way that is supposed to feel natural and rich in history. For example, building designs are informed by their function and placement in the environment, and take into account the physical properties of wood, stone, etc. in construction (http://the-witness.net/news/2015/06/polishing-the-architecture/). A lot of thought has also been put in to infusing backstory and a sense of history in to the visual design of things (http://the-witness.net/news/2011/12/architecture-in-the-witness/). I guess the main reason I feel weird about TTP isn't because some environments don't contribute functionally to the gameplay, it's because it uses the iconography of classical Roman, Egyptian etc. architecture, so I'm expecting to be able to find details about their "real life" functionality that I can infer a history from, but end up feeling unsatisfied when that doesn't exist. But actually, the worlds are simulations anyway, so obviously they wouldn't have a physical history to them, and are designed to feel unreal (visual glitches etc.). The entire game is concerned with existentialism, so i'd like to think this uneasy feeling is evoked intentionally. I'd love to read some behind the scenes stuff about TTP, I did a quick search and found Tom Jubert's blog: http://tom-jubert.blogspot.com . Not much writing about TTP though.

Haven't actually watched these, but Appaloosa, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, and The Homesman, sound like interesting contemporary (production-wise, not setting) westerns. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has has seen them.

Since The Witness has been brought up, I want to talk about one aspect of The Talos Principle that bothers me, which is made obvious when comparing it to The Witness (or at least my impression of what The Witness will be like). TTP is visually beautiful, but I often feel like the visual design contains a lot of overly distracting stuff. There will be little alcoves, ruins, piles of rocks, or winding paths, that at first glance seem like they could be important, or serve a functional or narrative purpose, but almost always end up being decorative instead. My default mode of game-playing is to explore environments quite thoroughly (i.e. completionist impulse), and that's how I played TTP at first. The game environments feel simultaneously too vast and sparse, and too busy for this mode of play to be sustainable however, so now I use the speed up time function to quickly pass over many areas of the game. On the other hand, the game does hide a lot of stuff in the environment, and so encourages focused exploration. I just find it slightly frustrating that most of the time this exploration does not seem to lead to anything important, or feel inherently interesting. I've been following the development blog of The Witness, and from what i've read it seems to be concerned to a greater extent than any other game I can think of, with consistently and comprehensively justifying the existence of everything in the game. Notably the devs and artists have received consultation from actual architects about the most "minor" of details. I expect exploration in the Witness will feel like its own reward. It's probably a bit unfair to compare The Witness to TTP in this regard, since the visual fidelity and more pronounced realism of the latter creates all sorts of challenges and expectations that the former can more easily avoid. I should also point out that there are a lot a of interesting world-building details throughout the game (e.g. the accuracy of the Roman bricks), and that whatever issues I have with TTP are shared by most other games with large environments. It's also interesting to consider whether my frustration with not knowing if some aspect of the environmental design is meaningful or purposeful, is in any way similar to the uncertainty and difficulty actual archaeologists go through when theorising about real historical remains. Or in more abstract philosophical terms, what things are and "why" they exist.

I didn't want to double post, which is why I didn't post anything when I finally got around to finishing the last episode. Then again I reaally wanted to double post, so thanks for necro-ing the thread. Also I didn't really know what, or how, or even if I wanted to share what i'm about to say, but i'll come to that later The quality of LiS has its ups and downs, all the way to the final scene, but I kinda love it for it's weird, almost amateurish at times, inconsistency. I didn't hate the ending either, and I now include it among my favourite games. So I stopped playing for a while (over 2 weeks) after the first section of Chapter 4, partly because I realised that I was binging and needed to instead focus on finishing work that I had been procrastinating about, but mostly because the actual contents of that first section had drained me. For me the lows of LiS don't detract from the emotional 'high' points that it reaches, the spoilered section being one of many. Life isn't perfect anyway, life is strange... i'm sorry I need to finish watching Steins;Gate now as well.

The base game was a favourite of mine, and i'm now "close" to finishing the DLC (want to get all the stars) after picking it up during the steam sale. The writing is hilarious (see Goldboom), and quite touching at times, and a lot of fun! Still one of the best explorations of existential ideas i've played since The Swapper.