Ben X

Miami Vice - rubbish. Feels like a made-for-tv undercover action thriller, with worse hair. Monster House - rubbish. Smug, boring, no empathetic characters, and full of those creepy-looking CG-kids that only The Incredibles has managed to avoid. Stormbreaker - godawful. Unbelievably clumsy and amateurish on every level. A Scanner Darkly - really good. Looks gorgeous, great performances. Don't expect a plot. Snakes On A Plane - good fun. Yes, I have a season-ticket for Cineworld cinemas, and yes, I'm 'between jobs' at the moment.

I saw it yesterday. It takes a bit too long to get going, and the ending could have done with being ramped up a bit, but it's generally good fun, inventive and cleverly avoids most cliches. Not Tremors, but exactly as good as you expect it to be deep down in your heart.

I loved the voices in CoMI. Especially Earl Boen as LeChuck, and Denny Delk as MURRAY! I really liked Dominic Armato as Guybrush as well, he was perfect. I pissed myself when I read some idiot claim they messed it up by making him a "whiny American idiot". Guybrush is a whiny idiot! In an American game! The best Mario voice, obviously, was Bob Hoskins.

Wild At Heart strikes a good balance between characteristic/accessible. I'd start with that.

Tempbot reminded me of Darren Aronofsky's films for some reason. I think it was the voice of the manager who's 'leaving at the end of the week'. The music at the end sounded a bit like Amelie as well...

I really enjoyed "Thank You For Smoking". I was laughing all the way through. *coff* and Pirates 2 *coff*

Here's me reenacting a scene from GTA: San Andreas.

I love this guy!

I was given an 'Additional Design' credit on a brilliant game called... Gibbage! Woooo!

Yay, someone with sense! Thanks for supporting me, Miffy! *Shut up, Miffy, shut uuuup.* I don't know this guy.

If you (attempt to) read the mess of replies to that Ron Gilbert post, you'll probably extrapolate this anyway, and indeed I'm sure most people in the world know this by now, but I'm going to say it quickly anyway as noone else has bothered: Ron Gilbert was partially inspired by the original POTC Disneyworld ride when creating Monkey Islands 1 & 2, so it's no surprise that the movie shares similarities with the games. I also agree with Thrik, though, that it's more than likely that many of the film team were influenced in turn by the games.

Are you crazy? Last Crusade is a brilliant film! It's funny, exciting, inventive. Brilliant acting, stunts, direction, script, setpieces, score. It can't quite touch Raiders, but by going on a lighter tack it sets itself apart from the first film, and so doesn't have to match it. Frankly, the tank action sequence near the end which Spielberg manages to sustain for about 20 minutes, moving effortlessly back and forth between action, laughs and emotional moments, justifies the film on its own.

The only way to rescue The Simpsons is to rename it Springfield, so they don't have to ruin almost every story they come up with by crowbarring the titular family in somehow. And Family Guy sucks.

If someone here is in the industry, who knows someone who knows someone, can I also make a few requests? Can we have Toonstruck 2 as soon as possible, please? And can Sam And Max Episodes get the original voices back and not suck, please? Ooh, and a really good Back To The Future game would be good. And can I have a job? And an Idle Thumbs game too, if you fancy it. Gibbage plug here. Thaaaaaaaaanks!

Yeah yeah, I've played BTTF 2 & 3 on the megadrive, and they were atrocious. But surely we can come up with something better than Probe Entertainment and Image Ltd (if my excellent research skills are to be trusted).

Noone's mentioned Akira yet (unless I missed it). Is that too obvious? I really liked it. Also, Perfect Blue. Really crazy 'it's a dream, no this is the dream, no this is the dream, no this is the dream, no this is the dream, no this is the dream, no this is the dream, no this is the dream' structure, pretty cool. Oh, and I really liked Samurai Jack, but I flicked through the Ronin graphic novel, and realised Frank Miller could probably be justified in stealthily sticking a katana up Genndy Tarkovsky's ass for pilfering his plot.

Every episode I've seen, she's been the weak link. Sub-Chris Morris/Ali G VTs sink this programme, along with the faux-pundits they get into the studio. They could almost cut this down to a 15 minute bit with Jon Stewart and leave it at that... Still, great stuff from the senators. You wonder how America gets so het up about video games, until you realise it's just people like this.

Have you guys seen Wondershowzen (spelling?), that this clip is from? It's brilliant. If you're in the UK, and have freeview, it's played on TMF around 10pm. I think it's MTV originally, so most likely all of America has heard of it... I'm surprised YouTube has let these clips on, seeing as the programme's still going, and they've got a DVD out...

Nic Cage for Rorschach, I say. He can do ugly and ginger, he's got the right physique and the laconic drawl. I thought the V for Vendetta movie was okay, but everything, especially the politics, was simplified to the point of being facile, I thought. And V was too humanised for my taste.

Speaking of youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgAuYskU9Uc Will we EVER see a reunion..? *sigh*

I didn't realise for ages that the AI in Hal-Life only becomes impressive on the highest difficulty setting. I was really annoyed about that, as I'm not that good a games-player, and I would have struggled to get through on that setting, without using the quick-save key to the point of breaking the game (I only allowed myself to use it when Valve forced me to smash crates for minutes at a time). Couldn't they have kept the AI high on all difficulty levels, and just adjust the AI health levels or whatever? I'd rather be impressed and scared by the AI whilst thanking my lucky stars I can dispatch them with a single shotgun blast to the face, rather than never get to experience it. Perhaps Black Mesa can fix this for me!

Balls, Liero won't work immediately on my work PC. How unlike Gibbage... From the sounds of it, though, Worms ripped it off something rotten.

Attempting to lineate this circular argument... The author claims that the suggested detail of HL1 is superior to the paraded detail of HL2, and yet isn't HL2 the more elliptic of the two? In HL1 , we know what is happening, why and how. In HL2, we are presented with a world into which we have awoken confused and horrified. We know nothing outside this city/state (in HL1 we can assume the outside world is oblivious and contemporaneously regular) of the world order, and inside it only what we gather from incidental detail. Surely that is the strength of HL2, hailed by critics as setting it apart from its contemporaries moreso than its graphics and other qualities?

"Like fruitcake!" - Sam And Max Hit The Road "They're waiting for you Gordon. In the test-chamberrrrrrrrr" - Half-Life "Matsaruba!" - alien buddy in Another World

Craig Charles did a gig at my university, tried to get in my girlfriend's knickers, then when he failed, went with the nearest fat chick.