Roderick

It's only a 20 minute trip from Copenhagen into Sweden, so you'll easily make due with the complimentary carcas from the airline upon arrival.

yesssssssssssssss

Yes, do play it, it's great!

For chronicling purposes: the kickstarter failed (to be fair it was horrible handled). Will we ever see an improved Outcast?

Resurrection! I've just finished the Director's Cut of Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars, marking the first time in at least ten years I've played the game. A few things drew my attention: Instantly noticeable is how Revolution have apparently put their best effort into uglifying this game. They seem to have redrawn some, but not all, of the animated sprites of the characters. The result is that sometimes some of them look super crisp and vector-y, and others pixely and old. Look at this: See how conspicuously different Duane is rendered? George himself suffers even worse from this, as some of his animations are redone, and others aren't. Then, to distract us even more, Dave Gibbons has drawn all of the characters a portrait that now pops up during dialogues. You can't switch this off. The portraits rarely animate and are drawn in a completely different style than the core game. Where the original was charming and consistent, this director's cut is visually a hodge-podge of styles. Another thing I noticed is that Revolution have tried to pretend the game is set in current times. That was true for the 1996 original of course, but the game is so uncompromisingly 90s that it doesn't translate. There's talk of Euros and Nico's radio plays a disastrously chosen array of indie soft rock (that is tonally so off that it smarts). George's monologue at the start of the game, where he speaks of 'the end of the millennium' has been removed. A better choice would've been to revel in that this is set in the 90s: nothing else makes sense. This is a world of public pay phones, no one has a mobile, there's no internet around and no one's putting Vines on Twitter about Templar murders. Come on. The additional content is well done, I think. It's fun to dig into Nico's backstory, but it only serves to emphasize that at the end of the game I still don't know anything about George! He starts out a tourist in Paris and at the end he's still just a tourist in Paris. I also notice now how weird his relationship with Nico is. He suddenly declares she's the girl he loves, but there's been no chemistry to speak of before that time. Then he kisses her while she's tied up - a move straight from the James Bond School of Seduction: force her until she starts to like it. I get why George would fall for Nico: she's a smart and sophisticated French reporter. But the other way around? George is on the one hand a surprisingly competent Indiana Jones character, solving mysteries and defying death all around, but on the other he's a complete goof. Throughout the game Nico seems more tired and vexed at him than anything else. Then George shows a particularly jealous and controlling side whenever André Lobineau comes up. What's there for Nico to like, exactly? It's not that I don't think it could never work out, but that it suddenly happens at the end of the game feels like wish fulfilment; George getting his reward for saving the world because that's what happens when a man meets a woman in fiction. But the relationship does exactly nothing for the story. I would've preferred it to develop slowly over the course of many games. What I do appreciate is how elegant the game is designed. There's no backtracking, and to be fair, not a lot of challenge either. Apart from one horrific code cracking puzzle, everything's solved before you notice there's a puzzle. The atmosphere is great, the music terrific and all in all it's a rollicking adventure... but we already had that in the original. This director's cut serves mostly to muck up the graphics and add an amusing but pointless diversion with nico. Rant about a twenty year old game over!!

Mington has been trying to get Olly Moss in for weeks now.

I am constantly gawking at the tapestries and intricate clothing. It's superb.

I am really enjoying A Bride's Story. Gorgeous art, and it just had the funniest chapter about twins desperate to find suitable suitors. FYI, A Bride's Story is about life along the old silk round, about a hundred years ago. It's about Arab tribal culture, specifically the arranged marriage of boys and girls. And it's neither salacious nor sensational in nature, it's delightful and intruiging. And just look at the art!

It looks amazing and flashy, Nach. Nice pair of mountains in the back!

No love for father?

Shucks Lu, a three hour trip! Also that is the most wizardly face I could conjure up.

It was an overwhelming succes! (Though I_Smell didn't show up, unfortunately.) We hung out, had a fantastic lunch at a popular Utrechtian café and in the evening saw a dumb Hollywood movie (The Expendables 3). All in all, pretty fun and worthy of a sequel.

I kind of binged on the recent Thumb episodes, so I don't know anymore where this was said, but y'all need to see Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call: New Orleans: Nic Cage Freaks The Fuck Out And Dances Edition. (I also wrote a spoilery review on the film for Filmadeus: http://www.filmadeus.com/2012/11/the-bad-lieutenant-port-of-call-new.html

This is another task for SOILER! Utrecht Central Station, 12:00, near the old NS ticket tooth booth (It was already in the mass e-mail I sent out though, perhaps it got lost in the spam folder)

The gazing starts around 2:10, and it is truly a sight. I'm not even sarcastic about this, more casually bewildered and « huh, well of course this exists. »

All that's required is a clumsy narration over the whole thing. "I stepped onto the canvas of DESPAIR... right next to the pit of madness. I thought to myself: hold on. I've got to be careful."

I'm actually surprised that most of the people here seem to emphasize the disjointed structure/thematics of Shoot the Piano Player, specifically because I never even noticed it to any extent. By way of apology, when I think back on it, this is because it struck me as 1. rather realistic. Real life is messy and crime, I should think, even more so. The so-called banality of evil, or in this case the goofiness of evil. One moment you can happy, the next sad and depressed. 2. a fun, 'French' take on noir. It makes me wonder whether there's an established discourse on the film that emphasizes this structure, that everyone seems to latch onto it here. As in, that might be the traditional way of viewing it? I went into the film knowing exactly nothing about it (except for the context of nouvelle vague), so I'm curious if you all read about it before and were influenced in your thinking by an [academic] text?

Wow, I came here for the brilliant title, and then there's the description. Can't wait to hear you talk about all the Silent Hills!

Shucks Osmo, that's sad to hear, but we'll deffo meet up another time. MAYBE IN YOUR NEW HOUSE? I may or may not (but I have) created a horrifying wizard hat that I'll wear on Utrecht CS, as a beacon for Thumbs.

Man I am bummed out about missing that sweet potential joke. Sweden's a nice place, but if you want to ride to Holland you'll have to go through Denmark and that's a warzone. The country got totally screwed in the nuclear fuck-up of 1998 and now only child-mutants dwell there. Best bring a Humvee and some blood-ridden carcases to placate them as you make your swift exit.

The hour draws near! This Saturday is that hour! I hope everyone is prepared. And don't forget: if you're in the neighborhood and so inclined, please drop by! We're collecting ourselves on Utrecht Central Station around 12:00 (noon).

Right now it's Gormanate's pick. On page two of this topic there's a list and TychoCelchu will add you if you send him a salacious PM.

My main philosophical worry would be: what the hell would most people do with their lives if they didn't have work? Would we become a purely hedonistic society where the pursuit of pleasure is all that matters? Would (some) people delve into art (I know I would, I'm halfway there at this point) and become like the Greek philosophers? What I also predict is the rise or 'human-made' goods as a becoming a huge deal, in the way 'biological' or 'organic' food is now. People will want stuff with flaws, errors, the clear mark of man-made things. All, of course, in the event the robots don't wipe us out. Let us stay on fucking topic, here.

Well, I slept on it, and I'm growing more and more wary of this film. First of all, it seems more than a little disingenuous. It hammers on two contradictory points: 1. The robot revolution will be nothing like the industrial revolution 2. Look to an example from the industrial revolution to see how we'll fare But then people aren't horses. Horses were always tools to use and therefore expendable and replaceable. People might be treated like that as well in some areas and countries, but human beings are still, at least in the west, held to be more than tools. Then there's the poor messaging. What exactly does this film tell us? Bottom line: be afraid. It's fearmongering. It doesn't offer any solution or outlook, it's just a basic prediction that we'll be screwed. I tend not to listen to those on principle. But most damning is that I've started to misbelieve the message. The film doesn't take into account any social context. It takes a single element (robotization) and takes it to a logical extreme, in a vacuum. But society doesn't work that way. There are thousands of forces at play that decide the future, no small part of it what was mentioned above: should a quarter of the people indeed become jobless and starving, no society would just go on if nothing happened. That's a major social change right there. I'm not saying there'd be a Butlerian Jihad, but pressures from all side would either diminish the influence of robots on the work force, or propel a new economy where robots indeed do all the work and the fruits of their labor is distributed to all. A Basic Income would be prime idea for this new society. But taking a real world example: look at what's happening to nuclear power. It is to this day clearly the most optimum way to produce a relatively clean abundance of energy. But as we speak, many countries are deciding to revert back to other, less efficient modes because of a wide range of societal pressures: mistrust of nuclear power after Fukushima, the desire to go 'green'... The film is too simplistic in saying that simply because robot work is more efficient, it'll necessarily win out against alternatives. It completely neglected to take into account the single most important force in all change: societal support and context.