Roderick

I have a hard time parsing what a Hideo Kojima Silent Hill game would be. I get why Del Toro is involved, that's a smart fit. His style of weird and scary was always very 'SH'. But Kojima? It doesn't help that I've never enjoyed any of his games, notably because of how dissonant they were tonally (the weird action thriller / goofy comedy worked as much for me as that train wreck of a 'comedy' film, True Lies, did). Since Silent Hill as a series is all about tone, that doesn't exactly instil a lot of confidence in me. On the other hand, the series is all but played out, so who gives a fuck? After SH3 there hasn't been a single one (barring perhaps Shattered Memories which I desperately want to get my hands on!) worth the effort. Even a poor Kojima attempt would rise above mediocre stuff like Homecoming and - as I hear - Downpour.

You're up, you're up, you're almost up, Gormanate! Start thinking on whether you'll take Con Air or The Rock! Or Rocky 5! Or The Scorpion King starring The Rock! Or The Rock That Shakes The Barley!

Was this posted?? Less "robots are coming to kill you", more "robots are taking our jobs and there's no fence we can build to stop their arrival".

Hoatzin, Esq., thank you.

Loved this. I have only seen Truffaut's (and Godard's) A Bout de Souffle, and this is another superb flick in my book. Also: hey guys! I actually managed to see this in my holiday! This is, I guess, French film noir. It has the dumpy protagonist, the constant philosophizing about dames, the hint of gangster plot. But at the same time it has that unstoppable French sense of the weird, culminating in one-off goofs like the inserts to dying mothers and bosses being bribed. It all adds to the wonderful energy of this movie. It manages to cohesively tie its drama and comedy elements together, and I thought it was thoroughly entertaining. But what a loathsomely cowardly main character Charles Aznavour played! It's disheartening to see him constantly running away, crippled by self-doubt, bringing ruin to all those around him. That's the noir-element, for sure, but hooleeeey shit. I just wanted to smack him on the head at some points. There were multiple times where he could've saved people or just done the right thing, but he shied away from it. The worst example is of course when he left his wife in the past and she jumped out of the window, but his attitude also cost the life of his current girlfriend and endangered his son's. Yikes! The characters' preoccupation with ladies felt strange at times, and I was never sure whether this was a critique of the way crude men speak of women, or if it was just a matter-of-fact thing, or a hold-over from the literary source material... I myself had to take it as a critique, most notably the earliest scene where the two thugs start ruminating on what they want of the ladies and the kind of men they are, and Lena is just sitting there nodding along as if to appease them. All in all, Shoot the Piano Player is fun and energetic, with a sometimes obnoxious lead, and a good spread of comedy and drama. Plus Truffauts great sense of editing. Loved the scenes where they're driving the car around the city, and the moment where the pianist is sitting in his wintry cottage, looking outside on watch. [EDIT] The more I think about this, the more I'm convinced it's a comedy. Just the fact that he ends up in the stupid little bar at the end, it has a Coen-esque feel to it. Little timid guy gets in over his head, even with enemies as clownish as the pipe-smoking goons.

I'm no hentai expert by any means, but I do want to break a lance for its sheer variety (in what I've seen in any case). More so than in live action porn, hentai usually has a story going on, and way more diversity in both content and tone. Sure, google up anything and you'll likely come across dozens of weird fetish manga with grossly exaggerated genitalia and breasts and proportions. But there's also more 'realistic' hentai. There are dramatic hentai with actual proper love stories. There's a thriller hentai that deals specifically with a couple in a strange 'peep show' relationship (which sounds hilariously ridiculous, but it's actually dramatic and sexy). The point being that when it comes to diversity and depth of content, hentai offers a huge range. Is some of it gross and exploitative? Absolutely. (Though especially those tales are so ludicrous, no sane person would expect it from real life.) Is the majority of it aimed at men? Yes. But in the margins there is something for everybody. As for the idealization of sex through pornography in general, I think that's a statement you can make about all art ever. Any film is unlike life. Any painting is not at all the way we see things ourselves. The question is, should we bestow on sex a special status, for whatever (maybe good, maybe not) reason, and decide "let's not idealize this specifically."?

'First to console'... the people who care about these things.

But what would the game have been like? 'Run and gun'? Firstperson shooter? Turret sequences?

I won't be, but I wish you a great time and tons of adoration by the 100.000+ Summer-crazed Germans attending! If you see Joe Kucan walking around, which is eminently possible, don't forget to surreptitiously steal a hair a brew from it a strange concoction. It will bestow eternal youth and increased length. [Also baldness.]

Ubisoft: « No no no you've got it wrong, AC fatigue is totally a thing we can remedy by doubling the dosage. » Soon: one new Assassin's Creed game per day. It'll be UBIQUITOUS. The prophecy will come true and Michèl Ancel will cry hailstones.

Wait a minute, people were interpreting this video as an endearing, heartwarming gesture to the cocoa farmers, instead of a horrible indictment of how monstrous and unfair our production queues are?

I think of all things I would've wished for, it's two bloody Assassin's Creed games per year. I still have to play ACIII, guys, honestly.

Oh yikes, I'm on a three week holiday stint in Germany, I DON'T KNOW IF I'LL BE IN THE POSITION TO WATCH ANCIENT FILMS! I'll try, but I've got a lot to do, weirdly.

I was in Bonn this weekend, at the Animagic convention, and it was super nice. Here's a pic of me with studio Bones boss Masahiko Minami, and MEOW from Space Dandy.

Because one has everything to do with the question and the other next to nothing? But let's not digress any further from the actual question on hand.

I would say introverts have a higher chance of developing social anxieties than extraverts, simply because of the way they process information (boldly put: introverts go inwards for reflection, extraverts go outwards). But there is no causality and it's certainly not an inherent trait.

Thank you spammers -> Squelch, but I rarely encounter them.

Being introvert =/= being afraid of social stuff. But if you have social anxieties, there are tons of multiplayer games (on every system), and they all have varying degrees of interactivitiness. Some games have live conversations (co-op shooters), others work fine with texting (MMO's), and then you have all sorts of communities, from the ones I wouldn't even dare set foot in because they just seem nasty (DOTA) to really lighthearted and welcoming ones (errrr Idle Thumbs! Wait that's not a game). I had a great time in World of Warcraft by the way, I mostly played it as a singleplayer game and whenever I interacted with others they were kind and fun.

Yesterday I removed a short post where I wrote that Deadpool is to me the epitome of 'trying too hard', like a badly done Ace Ventura, he's the ultimate expression of 'laugh or I'll shoot' random referential humor, but I didn't want to draw too much attention to the character. Now that I see I'm on the winning team, things are totally different. Everyone wants to belong.

The Plague Quarter is out and the first boss,

HUMANISUUMUU

I am extremely criteirtiiconal in daily life, how about you?

The last season is when Walt has perfected the art of lying to such a degree that there are no more tells - even the show doesn't acknowledge that he's lying. That's why it may seem a bit more straightforward, but the real treat is that you have to start figuring out when he's telling the truth and when he isn't. For the first time, you're his victim too.

Those are great!