circadianwolf

I recently saw The Hunger Games, having never read any of the books (which I hear are somewhat poorly written, even for YA lit) but to my great surprise I found myself absolutely loving it. The film is not really about the gladiatorial combat at all (which doesn't start until something like halfway into the movie) but about negotiating mass media's power in constructing and constraining identity in a postmodern (authoritarian) state and especially the the role that heteronormativity and patriarchy play in maintaining the power of the state--which I'm sure sounds ridiculously academic, but I think the ideas are presented in a way that's very real and directly relevant to the intended audience of teenage girls. In particular (mild spoilers) struck me as, even if it's that way in the novel, incredibly ballsy for a mainstream blockbuster film, to not only avoid one of the foundational elements of the heteronormative narrative but also to directly target its role in maintaining the state's power. I mean, jesus, the ending (much bigger spoilers): (It also seems to me that, at least for those of us who aren't teenage girls, the film may well work better than the novel, for similar reasons. In the film the audience is positioned as the audience of the Games themselves, complicit in the violence and other manipulations as entertainment for our voyeurism. We know that Katniss is largely performing for an audience, but--unlike in the novel, which I understand is in 1st person--most of the time we have no idea what she's thinking. Even if we can intuit her general feelings, the existence of that barrier feels important to me. As Peeta says, , or any of the other kids for that matter, since we get no better idea of what they're thinking either.) Also, Jennifer Lawrence is amazing and everything about the Capital is gorgeous(ly disgusting).

Hey dudes. I, err, have actually been reading Thumbs since the original site (via Chris's announcement post on the AGS forums, years ago). I had another account back then and actually posted here a fair bit! Then I left the forums for a long time. When the podcast started I created this account but never really used it. Lately I've been lurking, and now (predictably) I've signed in again for Phaedrus, but I might actually say something occasionally too.

Oh fuck yes. Wonderfully terrible classic. And the best adaptation of Brave New World ever!

Looking back on it, Alpha Protocol's may actually be decent: the problems with it, after all, meant that the minigame retained tension without being too difficult or tedious. I actually felt like I had to act quickly within the time limit even when I almost never failed, due to the frustrating controls.

Probably, yes.

Perhaps Jurassic Park's systems actually run on Reality 2.0 from Sam and Max.

Job is actually God's most faithful follower, which is the point of testing him. The three Rabbis presumably parallel the three "friends" of Job, and the tornado evokes the whirlwind that God appears out of to answer Job (though of course without the God appearing and answering stuff), but yeah, it's a very loose adaptation if it is intended to be, much moreso than say O Brother is to the Odyssey.

The problem with those descriptions, ThunderPeel, is that they never have an effect on actual government. The people making decisions who are "right-wing" talk about letting people fend from themselves, but what they do is consolidate power among the powerful and deprive the impoverished of what little power they do have. The people making decisions who are "left-wing" talk about making people work for the good of society, but what they do is consolidate power among the powerful and deprive the impoverished of what little power they do have. Whatever they say, it's an obfuscation and artifice designed to achieve those results. There is no such thing as "independence" (which is what I would say right-wing rhetoric is about) in a globalized society. There's also no such thing as "equality" (which is what I would say left-wing rhetoric is about). In the US, at least.

Season two is even better. It was a show that just kept growing and maturing, and the finale is bloody amazing. I really love how it manages to both be a loving homage to the Terminator film series and constantly push the science fiction aspects much farther than the films--what does the time travel do to the continuum? How did the terminators work? etc. It helps that Summer Glau is goddamned amazing. Dollhouse was quite good in season 2, though, once the show actually had a persistent main character and it started focusing more on all the other horrible potentialities of the doll technology. Still pretty rough as a whole, though.

Technically, Lewis said that Narnia wasn't allegory... because Aslan actually *is* Christ, in a different form in an alternate universe.

I picked it up when it was on sale for the same price from GamersGate a few weeks ago. It's definitely worth the price IMO. I encountered a few minor bugs but nothing that forced me to do more than replay a single mission or two. The gameplay is nothing fancy (mostly competent at least though) but the dialogue system is really cool (even if I would prefer it give the player more time to decide and actually tell them what Thornton was going to say/do) and there is a very fine (in the sense of opposed to granular) field of possibilities at work.

I agree with Kingz entirely. WikiLeaks isn't (or shouldn't be) a cult of personality.

The third season of Fringe is amazing. :tup: Season one also has one of the best mindfucks ever in its finale (which doesn't get fully explained until the latter half of the second season). It is, however, much like Lost and Alias in that the overarching plot generally isn't coherent at all. Third season has been better about that, though.

Finally saw The Social Network. Justin Timberlake's Sean Parker comes out looking better than anyone else in the film IMO, and certainly the only one who demonstrates any real understanding of the Internet (which mostly, I think, just says that Aaron Sorkin doesn't understand the Internet).

(It's Emperor Zombie from The Amazing Screw-On Head.)

TES used to have a fairly unique take on fantasy.. then Oblivion came.. and now they're bringing back dragons. Obviously that has little impact on the game itself, but that's basically all we learn from this trailer. (I mean, it's in Skyrim, but I don't remember anything about that other than that it's the Nordic province. So lots of snow and Vikings.)

Also the whole "sexist bro douche" thing (as Leigh Alexander termed it), of course. Seriously, why are the only video game awards on SpikeTV, the most offensive television channel besides Disney?

That's assuming it gets better... :tinfoilhat:

There's something brilliant about the bots posting in the thread about the threat of robots.

Actually, there are no WTCs in Deus Ex's NYC skyline. I don't think it's mentioned anywhere in the game, but a designer explained that it was due to technical limits (something with skyboxes and whatever) so they just handwaved it by saying they had been destroyed in a terrorist attack as well.

Legend, Anniversary, and Underworld were all quite good, if you like platformers. I really really enjoyed them. I believe Chris said somewhere that he enjoyed Underworld more than Uncharted, too (his opinion probably holds more relevance than mine). The story is complete trash, of course, although it was interesting that the last game is basically a struggle between three superpowered women for control of the planet. Objectification is definitely still there, but that bit was a little neat at least. Dunno about this new game. On the one hand, why is this a Tomb Raider game? I would be quite happy with further iterations on the formula of the recent games. On the other hand, island survival is a great theme that hasn't been done very well in games, and plays to games' current strengths (open world, no characters), so it could be really good. Cautiously optimistic indeed.

Well, there is the general issue (oft discussed) that adventure games are a particularly past-focused genre, frequently nostalgic for some halcyon days of adventure glory. All that no innovation stuff that's been done to death on Adventure Gamers for years. Which translates among other ways into these kind of jokes, in a "Hey, remember when adventure games were good?" sort of way. As opposed to, as brkl suggests, just making good games. Telltale does that, usually.

Yeah, I think in KGB's case the Sierra-style bullshit at least fits the Kafka-esque atmosphere. I had a similar feeling with STALKER's initial terrible bugginess--it felt appropriate given that the world was one in which everything was rusting, broken, and liable to fall apart at any moment. Doesn't exactly excuse them, but it's interesting.

I'm pretty sure Octodad will have a more interesting story than L.A. Noire.

John Robb seems a bit egotistical at times, but he's indeed a very smart guy, and his work on resilient communities is a great organizing trope for the various sustainability/alter-globalism/open source governance/green/anti-corporate oligarchy movements.