Nevsky

I suppose it's worth chucking in a link to Box Art, Simon Parkin's Tumblr with plenty of ace game cover artwork.

Sounds like we should arrange a game!

Has everyone had their fill of this, now? I downloaded it last week, had a little game with some Russian guys, and decided it's probably best to play with people I ostensibly know. Would any Thumbateers be up for another game at some point?

From what I can gather, there's a crazy amount of revisionist insanity going into the remakes - but, of course, that wasn't my point.

I want to play this game, but I have hardly any money and I don't want to potentially waste £££s by getting it and being too scared to play it. That's logical, right?

I've been watching the revamped/remastered Neon Genesis Evangelion films. In terms of pure design, ideas and imagination, it's pretty astounding. The narrative? Well, I think it's a miracle they made something that somehow feels both juvenile and head-breakingly complex at the same time.

I bloody loved Shutter Island, and reviewed it accordingly. Not sure why it didn't catch the critics in the way his previous films had, considering it is so bold in its music and its style. I liked how he took the dark, borderline surrealism of thrillers from the '40s and '50s, and used modern cinematography to make it rich and fresh. Actually, it's worth noting it grossed $300 million worldwide, which is Scorsese's highest. Last night I watched Woody Allen's Alice - a slice of whimsy that winks at Fellini. I didn't like it that much. It seemed a little half-baked, or uncertain about itself. Mia Farrow plays an upper class housewife who goes to a Chinese doctor, who gives her various herbs, drugs and potions allowing her to take stock of her life. One concoction turns her into a flirty bombshell, another turns her invisible - at one point she's given an opium pipe to chill out. Oh dear. There were some good bits and cameos - quite a touching scene with Alec Baldwin as the ghost of a former lover. But I didn't feel that the collision of silly exoticist fantasy and mundane real-world drama worked too well. I'm pretty close to having seen all of Allen's films now. I tell you, it's not all fun and games.

Woah I have a gaming PC for the first time in 5 years, so I'm on Steam! Thankfully it remembered my Half Life 2 registration from 6 years ago. Here I am! http://steamcommunity.com/id/nevskyp

It's more a case of them actually *having* a UK publisher this time around. You can still get the Oni Press edition, if you know where to look. I waited an extra week and a half for that sucker, and it didn't disappoint. It's not my favourite volume, but it was a suitable conclusion, I thought.

Oh drat, I'm sorry! I didn't even know I was going until the afternoon before, when I was down in the dumps and a friend told me it would cheer me up. It did.

Three projection tidbits: - I saw Inception this week in a crappy multiplex in Finland (7ish Euros a ticket during the day), and it was a totally fine picture, apart from a few minutes where the picture was rocking vertically. It was sorted out eventually, though. No problem. - Last week, I went down to the Prince Charles Cinema and saw a dirty old print of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. It took a few scenes to get used to the scratches and the iffy sound, but it was quite a joy. Also, it still had the classification information from the original release (it was an 'A'!). - I was watching a film a few weeks back at a preview screening room, the kind that has small screens that seat a couple of dozen people. About halfway through, I saw a flickering light in the corner of my eye. I looked over my shoulder, right into the projection booth. And the dude was playing Modern Warfare 2 on a little TV.

Well it's the whole price vs. quality thing, innit. I played the demo and I was very impressed by the creepy atmosphere, the minimal, delicate design, and the puzzle-platform-y deceptive simplicity of it all.

I was out of town for the weekend. Sounds like a good day, though, did you have fun?

I think I'm out of town this weekend, leaving on Friday. If not, I'll endeavour to be there.

I was offered some freelance work today for tomorrow morning. So I've just got back from a lecture and that's what I'm doing.

I have a membership to the Prince Charles, too! Let's do a mini-Thumbs cinema trip! Recently, I've been watching a bunch of films. Too many to go into detail. I had a mini-Arnie season, rewatching both Commando and Total Recall. I'd forgotten how much heady K. Dick sci-fi was in Total Recall, and Commando has much more of a sense of humour than I remembered, too. Plus I think that Arnold is a pretty good actor for the roles he took. He'd never win an Academy Award, but he certainly manages to be tough and hilarious without seeming pathetic - which helps both films a great deal. :tup: I saw Mega Piranha, as well. Watching such a cynical, intentionally bad film made me get angry about the 'so bad it's good' culture, and that it's got to the stage where The Asylum can run off to Belize with $500,000 and make a film that got more of an audience on Syfy than Caprica did. I suppose people like feeling superior to their entertainment. After the talk of The Apartment - has anyone seen One, Two, Three? It's Billy Wilder's follow-up - a broad satire based around a brought-out-of-retirement James Cagney as a Coca-Cola executive farcing around Berlin, trying to sell Coke to the Russians and, eventually, trying to stop his boss' daughter from running off with a Communist. I didn't like it too much - I thought the pacing was a bit stretched at times, and the satirical aspects were way too blunt, not to mention soft on the Americans - but it's a good piece of light entertainment. Interesting when compared with harder-nosed Cold War films, too.

Speaking of this, what about

Ah, sorry. I came back late from a lecture, made dinner, and watched Commando. That's enough rockets for me I think. Hope it was fun!

As promised over in the 'Life' thread, here is a little mini-podcast-thing I have been working on recently. Kind of an evocative voxpop-collage mood piece around cosplay and the MCM Expo. I interviewed 18 comics creators from the Expo (including Kieron Gillen, Ben Templesmith, John Allison) and tied it together with some suitably whimsical music. Check it out here! This is still all quite new to me, and I'm trying to do something a little different than a straight-up 'cast. So any comments would be appreciated.

...? I'm just putting the finishing touches to a cosplay-themed mini 'cast. I'll put a link in the 'Plug Your Shit' thread when I upload it, because I feel we've been derailing the 'Life' thread a little too much. In life terms, I've just finished a short stint at a magazine, and I am now back living a life of uncertainty and ambiguity.

'Twas a good weekend. Aw, but half the fun is being out there, thinking you're losing your mind as you stuff you hands in your pockets, as best to avoid feeling up a 16 year old in a homemade Bayonetta costume.

MCM Expo! I was there... Video GAMES: (I am not in this photograph. The closest I came to cosplay was wearing a t-shirt with Donald Duck on it.)

I liked Sweeney Todd as a piece of visual eye-candy, but I didn't like the actual musical much at all. I take exception with complaints over Tim Burton 'casting his wife' in each of his movies. I mean, I would, because Helena Bonham Carter just happens to be the best British actress of her generation*. Perhaps he's monopolising her time a little, but I always think she brings something to her roles - which are mostly supporting characters anyway. *Controversial - and wildly subjective - statement, I know, but it's between her, Tilda Swinton and Emma Thompson.

I was trying not to think of this yesterday, because it started to make my head hurt, but yeah, in the sequels it goes out the window. So much so that you have weird bits like how Old Biff can go back in time to give Young 50s Biff the Almanac, yet he then returns to an unchanged 'There's something wrong with your kids!' future, where Marty, Jennifer and Doc are farcing around. It's only once they go back to 1985 that history has changed. So it seems that anyone who has even touched the Delorean becomes unaffected by the shifts of history. Although, I don't feel like these things are problems - time travel fiction pursues narrative over (speculative, in this case) science. So reading up on your physics, and close-analysing the representation of time in these films, will only dismantle some of the great pieces of popcorn entertainment of the last 30 years.

Let us pray. (Lectures are back on this week, and I have a deadline for some work tomorrow too. So either I'll be playing, or I'll be tearing my hair out about space and cinema.)