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I honestly didn't like it that much. OK, there was the whole tortilla thing and the Spanish scenes, and I liked how Andy found a solution to his toys problem at the end, and maybe the Totoro cameo raised a smile but overall I didn't like the third one that much. I'd be hard-pressed to remember anything about it. That having been said, I'm excited for their (far) future. Henry Selick, who made James and the Giant Peach and the untouchable Coraline, has signed a long-term contract with Pixar to make stop-motion animation movies. It could be fun. I just hope it's not another run of sequels, like we're getting in the next couple of years.

I saw Glengarry Glen Ross. David Mamet's dialogue isn't as wrong as the Coens', but the plot and the characters, plus superb casting, directing and acting, make this a damn fine movie. I guess it didn't explore all avenues it strikes up to the extent I want it to, but it doesn't detract from the movie. But, seriously, what a cast. Ed Harris, Al Pacino, Kevin Spacey, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin, Jonathan Pryce, Alan Arkin, all at the top of their game and with such CHEMISTRY. GOD, I love it. Anyways, yeah, excellent movie. Fans of Grim Fandango's storyline would especially enjoy.

Second episode topped the first one. My favorite two-parter ever, and maybe the best DW episode I've seen.

I thought this was a pretty interesting article, and the first comment on the Reddit page I got it from was interesting too. Edit: this is an interesting response I stopped trusting game reviews and reviewers when the Gamespot Kane and Lynch fiasco reared its head, though there's some people I still like, for all the reasons listed in the articles above. Additional reasons: - I hate that reviewers will grudgingly play game A (say, I dunno, Insecticide) to get to play game B (say Halo Reach) when all they give a fuck about is B and want to get A over and done with. They'll slap it with a low score and move on. - I hate that some people get certain games to play over and over again. You know, staff member A likes RTS games, so he'll continually review them and be biased. Why not throw the games at someone who isn't particularly a fan of them? Do a double review. This is especially important for "casual" games that strive to convert non-gamers to the dark side. - Websites that give the same damn reviewers games over and over again for them to just sit there and moan about how it ain't how it used to be. Adventure games get most of the heat for this ("THEY'RE BEING DUMBED DOWN THE CAT MUSTACHE PUZZLE WAS GENIOUS!!!!!!!"), though RPGs come under fire too. John Walker/RPS on Telltale comes to mind as an example. - Completely uncritical thinking. Slow platforming game clearly inspired by Ico? It's art. David Cage yaps about how emotional his game is? Pulitzer-worthy masterpiece. Reviewers will spit and swallow anything if you ask them to. - Punishing risk. This is my biggest beef with the games industry. If a game takes a risk that doesn't pay off, you must kill it with fire. If it does pay off, it's brillo and the guy who made it is a genius. Guy, mind you, not team. Gaming is, outside of Valve and Blizzard, one man orchestrating chumps to weave his ingenious idea into a world-changing existence. Yes.

I saw an animated movie called 5 Centimeters Per Second today. I enjoyed it, despite the fact I generally feel uneasy around anime and have seen little, enjoyed less. This was, much like Miyazaki's movies, an exception. The first stand-out thing is the incredible art direction, done in a distinct visual style developed by director Makoto Shinkai. If you want to see how truly breathtaking backgrounds can be, this is your go-to movie. Every frame is brilliant and deserves to be hung on a wall or studied by other artists, good as it is in choice of colour and angle. The characters are not exceptional (pretty standard anime characters, really), though Shinkai uses this to his advantage as he indicates how they change throughout the story. A stand-out for thing for me was how it mixed "realistic" takes on drawings with down-played or exaggerated art. It creates a fresh, inspiring take on art. Quite remarkable, actually. The story is a little loose, but is essentially a Haruki Murakami-inspired take on innocent, naive love - or, more accurately, it uses love as a lens to explore how, just by living, little pieces of exhaustion and tiredness begin to accumulate. Anyways, it's worth watching. Not everyone will like the movie or the story, though I did, but I guarantee you will, at least, admire the art and the colours.

No, see, I like your sentiment. Your take aims for a bullshit-free opinion on a game. It's everyone else whose stuff is, for the most part, completely worthless.

Oh, I agree. I don't think it should be a blanket rule. It's just that, sometimes, you need to have several opinions to accurately reflect the quality of a game. Anime fans are more likely to enjoy a JRPG than a non-anime fan, so while the former goes "FFFFFFFFFF this game is so freaking awesome," the latter says something more measured and skeptical. You know, what a jrpg fan considers to be standard the other guy sees as brilliant/ridiculous/stupid, etc. Yessir.

I want to see this movie. (Edit: d'oh.) hRT86ZggCEk

This blog post [edit: d'oh, fixed link] by Roger Ebert is relevant and interesting. Kind of makes you wonder about all the great writers you don't know about. I'll name two unjustly overlooked writers: Frank Norris (McTeague, The Pit; incidentally, available on Gutenberg) and Charles Willeford (Miami Blues, Cockfighter).

Not fair for them to spoil it like that! My friend loves Penny Arcade and the Patrick Rothfuss novels. Why should he have the series spoiled because the book won't arrive here for another few months? Shame.

Nah, Landsman's unique. He's clearly influenced by Philip Marlowe but he stands out on his own. Also, yeah, too bad you read the synopsis. I avoid them for that very reason. 90% of the time I pick up a novel I have no idea what it's about - just how I like it.

I kind of like A Wild Sheep Chase, though it felt too random and weird. I ended up loving South of the Border, West of the Sun, though. I want to read Inherent Vice at some point in the future. Neuromancer I plan on reading very soon. This I have to disagree with, though. I thought Yiddish was excellent, a crime novel of ideas. Chess, Judaism, noir, alternate history. The characters are interesting, even Landsman, who is cut from the same fabric as other detectives, but ends-up being woven into something different. Some things I liked: - The story structure. It's really quite good at blending plot, story and backstory together in a way that makes it all seamless. Like the whole thing with , which is only brought up midway through the book but hinted at throughout. It made it into a richer experience. - The motive. I say this as a Middle-Easterner, but the whole backstory that leads to the body being found at the hotel in the first place rang very true to me. It's exactly the way insane religious fundamentalism works. - The lack of easy answers. I don't know whether or not but it's pretty awesome that this becomes irrelevant. . - You don't need to have any sort of grasp on Judaism or Hebrew or Yiddish for you to enjoy the book. It helps, but most of it is stuff you pick-up as you go along. It helps if you know some things ("Sholem", which means "peace", being a word used for "gun", which made me laugh a lot), but it's not a requirement. It's more akin to an author making an in-joke to previous books. You'll laugh if you know about it, but it'll just seem like another thing in the book if you don't. - I'd kill to write prose that good. Things I didn't like: - The way the actual crime is solved. Though it's not that relevant in the grand scheme of things, you could honestly write the crime as a crime in a short story collection and people would ignore it. As a police procedural, it's not that great. - Sometimes there'd be large amounts of prose in the middle of a conversation. You know, Shemets would say something like, "Ah geez, Meyer, what are you calling me in the middle of the fucking night for?" and there's a whole page of Meyer thinking before he bothers responding. By that point, you've forgotten what Shemets said in the first place and have to go back, which kind of harms the suspension of disbelief. I'm sure I had a lot more to say about the novel, but it's been around eight months since I finished it. All in all, it's a greatgreatgreat book though. One of my favorite crime novels.

I've yet to read anything by the man that doesn't stink of "I want to be like Old Man Murray". He has ten years under his belt and not a single piece that has impressed me. This wankfest is the worst of the lot. I guess his stuff in general isn't as bad as IGN's or I wouldn't have bothered with a full three (edit: fuck that, two; I guess I've contradicted myself and he's the same shit, different flavor of IGN) paragraphs of snobby dismissal, but he comes across as relentlessly hokey and insincere. Or maybe I just envy his Japanese dork pop star look, I can't be sure.

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Been there with some C++ code I wrote a while back. Oh my articles. How I wept in joy and bitter tears. Then I'm being menaced by ducks.

Interesting. Do you think this is because it's a game from Square, or because the idea itself just put you off regardless? Nah, I'm playing Final Fantasy. I'm on a Final Fantasy kick and want to keep it going, because the urge for something like that is just so rare for me. I think I'll play a handful of those before moving onto Legend of Mana, thus making 2011 the Year of the RPG.

I have this on my backlog and plan on playing it before the year is up. I basically bought it because it looked pretty. But I'm surprised at this: Ya know, I like Final Fantasy, kind of, but it's biggest shortcomings are the writing (including story) and how it's delivered. It often feels like a big anime series, the kind I watched when I was a kid, and I often think that this is where this episode or that episode would end. So I'm kind of surprised you think it's such a big deal. That having been said, maybe the hero being a superfluous fifth wheel was just something they thought they'd try? It feels like it's intentional. I'm still looking forward to playing this before the year is up.

I hear that they're both good, but the first's aged a bit. The sequel remains a point of comparison for all Bioware games afterwards. My friend's been talking about Heroes of Might and Magic IV all day, and it sounds good. I hear Broken Sword, Serious Sam, Icewind Dale and Temple of Elemental Evil are all good too. Edit: also I think this should be in a different thread.

This thread has worked an irrevocable urge in me to read The Name of the Wind and The Way of Kings. Grr! I'll settle for my own backlog, but I'm devouring those two the second it's empty. Almost done with Oliver Twist. It's Really Quite Something, and it's remarkable to think that he wrote it when he was so young. It's only his second novel, and just one among his almost a dozen classics. Charles Dickens is the shit. I think I'm going to start On Stranger Tides next.

No, they mentioned it. I thought you knew. They linked to it when they released Torment.

For the record, I don't mind sarcasm or anything like that. Everyone's been super nice. Anyways, it seems like things have calmed down, though some people are calling up for arms. They'll be swatted down quickly. University tomorrow (heh, I say tomorrow; it's in six hours! Damn you assignments, I need sleep!) should be interesting.

Okay, one more post and then I'll leave this thread alone. The situation is slowly getting out of hand but I won't annoy you guys with it. ieGqRd8pbOQ University is going to be weird tomorrow.

Oh and here's a video about some of the initial protests yesterday, before they gained momentum. EUMduW6W_mE

Things aren't as bad as they were in Egypt, but there were violent clashes. The guy who died was beaten to death by police. What a way to go... Funny how the news isn't reporting anything. Thanks for the kind words and thoughts, though! Some things: - Blog about stuff happenin'. - Everyone on Facebook is an EXPERT on politics and philosophy today. Every single person's status begins as, "I am loyal to the country, to the King and his family, and what I want to say is..." Some people are saying that the dead dude had it coming, that these people are "trash" (the kind of wording they're using is horrible and demeaning, and has no equivalent in English, I'm afraid), and that things have to stay as they are. Needless to say, the ones I've seen are all from big families with a huge tribal mentality...On the other hand, there are people saying that change is needed, but god bless the King. Videos. Scarce, but they're popping up. I especially love the plainscloth intelligence officers: rfcVIG3ERNA Pywc8V-akgs Pro-government fighting anti-government. I love how they're accusing each other of being "un-patriotic" and both sides insist they love the country and the King. It's like a match between George Bush and his clone: they both spew meaningless crap, say the P word and ignore the other party. IFbREUXVgBY In the next one, the man is saying, "What happened?" and the girl is saying, "They're hosing us down with water cannons." I think the last thing she says is, "Don't go there," but she's too frightened and I can't make out what she's saying. ylW3qT9SeLc JdV9216Nrsk

Riots in Jordan. Streets of Amman are closing up. 10 minutes away from my house, violence has started. 35 injured, 1 dead. Police were giving protesters water in front of camera earlier, now arresting the injured. If I disappear for over a week, I've gone to jail for posting crap like this on the internet. woo.