Ben X

Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are amaaaazing.

Not really. I'm a big fan of a lot of children's films, but this has the problems with pacing and tone whomever it's aimed at. Like I said, I wish Jackson had aimed it more at kids. I forgot to say that Freeman and most of the actors are very good, and most of the CG characters look great (although I suspect the lead orc will soon feel very I Am Legend).

That was fun! Thanks for showing up, guys!

This is in ten minutes!

Watched this yesterday, didn't really enjoy it. The HFR was massively jarring at first (that sped-up feel is just as bad as TV motion interpolation), but about halfway through the movie, I started getting used to it. It's weird, because if you compare it to how things look IRL, it is closer to that, but at the time because you're used to 24fps it just feels bizarre. I think I'll need a few more movies in this format before I really get used to it and start enjoying it. The 3D seemed fine, but it's hard to say if the HFR improved it because it was so underused. I just don't understand why James Cameron has been the only filmmaker to use 3D to really make an impact on the viewer - the 'subtle feeling of depth' that most 3D films aim for is so subtle it's barely existent. I wonder whether the HFR contributed to this feeling, but the whole film felt rushed. The pacing had none of the variation of the LOTR films, it was just full-steam ahead all the way. It basically goes "peril! Escape! Run to next location! Peril! Escape!" There's never a chance to get a feeling for place or character, before someone dramatically appears to rescue everyone in the nick of time so they can keep running. Plus, a lot of the direction feels either very half-hearted and perfunctory or tends to obscure what is actually happening. I've never really felt this with Jackson's direction before. A lot of the dramatic beats, character motivations, action sequences and locations feel all too similar to LOTR as well. I know this is a little unfair with the locations, but I was really hoping to discover new, completely different feeling areas of Middle-Earth in this film. Instead, it's The Shire, Rivendell, forests, underground caves, dwarven lairs and that's it. The tone is, as someone pointed out from the trailer, rather portentous and heavy for what is essentially a picaresque caper. The film is bogged down with bookending narration, unnecessary backstory and set-ups for the next movies that serve no purpose in this one (White Council, spiders, Necromancer) that the thin storyline can't support.. I really wish they'd made it much more of a kid's film. That said, there are some nice moments and scenes (the Gollum sequence is fantastic), and it often looks super-real and beautiful when Jackson takes a moment to soak up the surroundings.

Looks very nice, reminds me of Amiga games and specifically Krusty's Fun House (having googled it, this isn't terribly accurate. I think it's the sprite that does it). You realise that you're leaving yourselves wide open to snarky review quips with that title though, right?

I thought you'd be more enthusiastic about Dave Gilbert drinks, TP..?

Ben There, Dan That! is this week's Double Fine Game Club game. I'll be there, doing whatever is expected of me (livechat, I suppose). Please come join! http://www.doublefine.com/forums/viewthread/8098

To paraphrase Douglas Adams: I love the subtexts in ASOIAF. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly over my head.

Heh, that's EDGE for you..!

That football freestyling is very impressive (but could do with trimming down)! I was hoping for something exciting/extremely uncool in the boat one, though, not just a boat coming off the back of a vehicle.

I don't know if I ever got round to saying this, but it's absolutely not the story that people rate in the HL games, it's the storytelling. The actual plot is paper-thin ("a man fights an alien invasion at a science facility/a dictatorship in a dystopia"), but this is actually a smart decision because it allows the immersive atmosphere, characters and background story details to be shown not told, using loads of incidental details (paper-clippings, break-rooms) and brilliantly-staged comedic/dramatic vignettes (a man comforting his partner, a scientist killing a headcrab with a chair only to be jumped by another, unnoticed one, mid-celebration), plus the commitment to never breaking the first-person view and hardly ever freezing the character in place to let a conversation play out. This kind of stuff is pretty standard now (which is probably why some people don't realise it's this that HL is praised for, as opposed to the storyline), but it was really fresh when the HL games came out, and is probably what PC Gamer meant! Interestingly, another FPS, SiN, also took a step forward in FPS storytelling (eg fully interactive/hackable yet optional ATMs, army guys rappelling down through a skylight), but it came out very close to HL and got eclipsed and almost forgotten. I digress also!

I was going to say that I absolutely wouldn't pay the $20, but this is a better suggestion. It covers you from any fallout from work, and after her doing similar at Christmas has the sweet, sweet taste of poetic justice.

Just like Half Life!

Meaning: ?

Yeah, but HFR may be a special case. Plus I could have sworn it had a few other days on the pdf the first time I looked at it...

Hey TP, I just looked at this again, and it seems they are now only doing HFR screenings on the 13th. Was that always the case? I was considering seeing it again in HFR at the weekend...

No it's not, it's just light-hearted!

Well yeah, but it's easier to make you guys do it!

Source, please!

...for five minutes, then it's going to be LIFE-CHANGINGLY BEAUTIFUL.

That first part is the smart one.

Totally agreed, although you can't read ASOIAF on a bike, and your lips get all dry.

Waaaiiiiit a minute, didn't Tolkien write this specifically for his children? I thought he improv'd it as a bedtime story/sent it chapter by chapter back to them from the WWI trenches? Besides, you can't tell me that a book starting like this: isn't a children's book. NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT. TP, I'm hoping anyone going to see it on a weekday lunchtime will be an informed nerd such as ourselves.