Nevsky

As in the 10/11? That is currently free for me. Subject to change.

Will try to be back in time for this!

I approve of this message. My calendar is erratic and usually quite unpredictable, but let me know when and I'll see if I'm free. Something cheap and central would be ideal. We could even be stereotypes and go to play Street Fighter IV at the Trocadero. By 'play' I mean 'get slaughtered at'. Also I'm probably too much of a cheapskate to pay to play in an arcade. A pub it is then?

Yep, I got it after all. I had 2000 points spare and if there will be one or two Thumbs-related deathmatch games, then that'll be worth it. Plus, ha! I'd completely forgotten about the whole explorable Carrington Institute. It's huge! With that, the shooting gallery and the immense multiplayer / co-operative / counter-operative stuff, this is quite a package.

I'm up for some SF4 matches if the opportunity arises. I haven't played in a while, but I had a good streak* going at one time, playing as Dan and humiliating the Ken players. I bow down to your stick, though, Mr. Pat. *I had a 5 win streak at one point, but my average is 50% or something. I'm not very good.

Holy cow! Definitely going to check this out now. I was a big Goldeneye player, but skipped over Perfect Dark. My friends were more inclined towards Smash Bros and Mario Kart, and before we knew it we'd transferred over to the Dreamcast anyway. But I'll give this a try.

Loving the theme tune. I might be in this week.

Great videos, James! Sorry I missed this, looked like a fun one.

All this makes me wish I had a gaming PC. Nice work on Valve's part. I wonder if they expected the community to get this far so quickly? Most ARG makers seem surprised by how the hivemind makes easy meat of this stuff.

Ah, I'm out this evening, I'm afraid. Have fun, you better-than-podcast madmen.

Currently typing some words, will be online in a bit.

Oh wow I'm free tonight! Be prepared for Grand Thumbs Mediocre Auto.

Yeah, I was once in a screening for a Film Studies Course, and I heard someone mutter, seemingly without a hint of self-awareness, 'Aw, it's a black and white film?' and sigh broadly.

Gasp! I like Amelie, but prefer Delicatessen. In fact, that French essay I rabbited on about the other week was in part about those films. In other news: Casablanca and The Big Sleep must suck, because they're both in black and white. Urgh.

I hope it was fun. I got back about half an hour ago, but I have a presentation to give at University tomorrow evening, so I'm in bed trawling through quotations. When people come to my house, and I point to my bedroom and say 'that's where the magic happens'... I'm certainly not lying. I hope Grand Thumb Not Borderlands Auto was fun for you all.

I am at a workshop with the people from http://bookleteer.com/ this evening, but I might make it back in time for a round or two. We shall see.

Well it's not 'bad translation', it's just a Romanised transliteration of the Russian word, in the same way that Tarkovsky's other films can be called Zerkalo (Mirror) or Ivanovo detstvo (Ivan's Childhood). It's just a way for those writers or institutions that want to present titles in the original language to do so without discriminating against their primarily non-Cyrillic literate readers (happens with many films from cultures that don't use the Latin alphabet).

I've been completely sucked in to the multiplayer. I'm not even enjoying it, it's just tickling that deathmatch muscle that has lay dormant since I stopped playing Quake. And the XP / Level-up system makes it very compelling.

Wow, if I ever find myself in Calgary, I know where I'd go... Films from 1935? I'd say that this one would be a no-brainer, maybe around February. Seriously, though. I really like Captain Blood, and Hitchcock's The 39 Steps. I would love to see those films in a cinema. Beyond that, nothing huge, but I could be swayed into seeing Bride of Frankenstein and A Night at the Opera. I'm not the person to ask about Elvis films. I've only seen one (Love Me Tender) and I didn't like it much at all.

I can vouch for 8 1/2, too. I like that film a lot. Me, I've been watching a shedload of French films, tenuously tied to an essay I've been writing. This means that all 8 films I've seen so far in 2010 have been French. One I would completely recommend is A Christmas Tale (un conte de noel), which is a film about an idiosyncratic family that come together for Christmas. It got a lot of attention when it was released internationally at the start of 2009 - and it's very good! Nicely complex, bittersweet, melancholic, odd and charming without being saccharine or arrogantly ironic. Before I watched it, I noticed a lot of (not unfounded) similarities with The Royal Tenenbaums. I like Wes Anderson a lot, but this film was better - as the dysfunctional, at times psychotic elements of the family weren't overly quirky at all, it was all very grounded. The performances are great as well, with a handful of very strong French actors in there, including Catherine Deneuve as the matriarch and Mathieu Amalric as the estranged, alcoholic elder son (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and I believe he was a Bond villain in Quantum of Solace). And also Chiara Mastroianni, who is awesome and beautiful - which is a little unsettling because she looks so much like her dad. Her dad being Marcello Mastroianni, the Italian actor who starred in, among other things, 8 1/2, which is a film I can vouch for. I like that film a lot.

I will most likely be going to this on the Tuesday, but if it is Monday, I can do that. Might have been a calendar mix-up, though - the end of December/start of January period is particularly hazy.

Next Monday?

That's an awesome book. I don't think many come out of it well - but no reason to lose respect for any of them, if I remember correctly. I think the way he deals with George Lucas is particlarly potent, and is quite heartbreaking.

More ladder confusion?!

Neck-deep in essay nonsense, so working on that and watching shedloads of films to stuff into it. Sorry. Last week I was in Manchester, at the family homestead. Next week, maybe, but I might be going to something. 2010 is the time of busy-ness, or business.