mikemariano

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Posts posted by mikemariano

  5. Posted

    17 hours ago, Jake said:

    Half Life 2 episode 2 is probably the best piece of Half Life 2 content that Valve made. It ends on a cliffhanger but also: it's an amazing game moment to moment and as a complete chapter of a story.

     

    Definitely! I agree more with what you said than what I said.

     

    There are parts of Laidlaw's outline that say "exciting video game setpiece goes here" to really bring out those moment-to-moment strengths of the prior games. It seems like Laidlaw did everything he could do to get the team excited and I wonder why it didn't catch on.

  6. Posted

    25 minutes ago, sclpls said:

    It is a bummer that a bunch of HL fans seem to have responded to this by negative review bombing other Valve games. :-(

     

    The flurry of negative reviews for Half-Life 2: Episode 2 all seem pretty honest in their frustration. In some aspects, recommending the Episodes now is like recommending Spacebase DF-9, another game publicly abandoned by its company post-release.

     

    The one negative review added recently to Ricochet is petty, though.

  7. Posted

    13 minutes ago, eot said:

    Reads like it would've been a challenging script to make justice.

     

    I think the letter is a really good possibility space for Half-Life 2: Episode 3 — ice battles! Using Source's optical illusions to create a Dyson Sphere!

     

    But trying to make it Half-Life 3? It isn't a big enough story for that.

  11. Posted

    Next year Valve will release...a game!

     

     

    Do you like Collectible Card Games? Do you like Dota? Do you like having aggressive behavioral analytics run on you at all times? Then Artifact is for you!

     

    I don't see a site yet. Are there any details out there? (There are none in the trailer.)

     

    I'm excited to see any sort of game development at all at Valve; we'll see if this actually comes out next year!

  14. Posted

    2 hours ago, pyide said:

    Dougie doing the party train / conga line (amazing) presumably after being out all night celebrating in part 11, when in #12 we last saw Dougie "playing catch" with Sonny Jim.

     

    Since Sonny Jim gets his gym set that takes up the whole backyard this episode, last episode was the absolute last time they could use that catch game. They definitely found that one in the editing room!

  15. Posted

    Finally saw this episode and listened to the podcast.

     

    I couldn't tell if Sarah's double voice matched up with her low, seemingly-possessed vocals from the Season 2 finale. Could she have been in this state for 25 years?

     

    If you're going to put two Tarantino veterans in an a scene together where they discuss fast food options and casually shoot somebody in the head, uh, don't.

     

    I kinda wished the game of catch went on longer.  One throw to Dougie; no reaction. Sonny-Jim walks to the ball, picks it up, throws it again. The same thing. Then on the third throw Dougie's Sam Raimi-reflexes kick in and he catches the ball perfectly, still with no reaction on his face.

  19. Posted

    3 hours ago, Digger said:

    It seemed uncharacteristically obvious in how pieces were coming together and would meet up.  I don't trust it.

     

    This is the correct reaction to have. I am looking forward to the next curveball that gets thrown at us.

     

    3 hours ago, Digger said:

    Is Twin Peaks time synced with the rest of the action we've been seeing?

     

    As far as I can tell, it is. I've been trying to identify scenes that are shown out of chronological sequence but I can't think of anything not identified that way.

  22. Posted

    I remember sitting in the theatre when the woman at the pizza place register answers the phone in time with the music and wondering, "How many takes did they have to film for that?" It was a meticulously planned moment with no impact.

     

    Uh...and that kinda extends to my feelings overall...

  23. Posted

    On 5/26/2015 at 7:52 AM, mikemariano said:

    I just found this 1992 alt.tv.twin-peaks recap of an advance Minneapolis screening of Fire Walk With Me.  It was a 3:40 cut with Robert Engels doing a Q&A afterwards.

     

    Engels also talked about a planned sequel movie to Fire Walk With Me!

     

    It's crazy to think about a Cooper-less sequel to Twin Peaks that would just be following David Bowie around.

     

    Just re-read my post from the Fire Walk With Me thread, in which Robert Engels said a post-series Twin Peaks movie would need to include at least "one of the four people who knew what was going on," which included Cooper, Windom Earle, Major Briggs, and another character the audience member didn't remember, plus a wish to use Phillip Jeffries again.

     

    Except for Windom Earle, all of these characters have (sort of) shown up again in Twin Peaks: The Return.

  25. Posted

    Oh, and Jake's description of Lost's finale as "the worst resolution of ambiguous lore, sort of meta-arc, in TV history a decade ago," really spoke to me. I might have said this before but I felt so burned by Lost I gave up watching all new television. In the years since I've seen new episodes of grandfathered series like The Simpsons and Arrested Development, some episodes of Orphan Black before they started torturing the husband, and almost nothing else. Twin Peaks The Return brought me back!