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| Thursday, August 4, 2005 10:26 AM |
| The League of Extraordinary Bullet Points |
 by Fëanor |
- At long last, we have a release date for the fourth Indiana Jones movie! It's February 2, 2007! Yay!
The only thing that worries me about this article is the part about George tweaking the screenplay. Somebody needs to run up to the outside of Skywalker Ranch with a bullhorn and say, "Slowly put the screenplay down and back away! Come out with your hands on your head! We're sending in a screenwriter who knows and cares how human beings actually interact with each other!"
- I enjoyed Defective Yeti's take on the whole "Bush Appoints Bolton to UN" fiasco. It really is hard to believe that "Can I Touch You...There?" is a real song.
- I hadn't heard of Afro Samurai before this, but it sounds right up Sam L.'s alley. And my alley, for that matter. I'll keep an eye out for the cartoon and the movie.
- This story about Sony's fake critic is pretty funny. Apparently they were quoting a non-existent movie reviewer in the print ads for some of their movies a couple years ago, and if you saw one of those movies you can get in on a class action lawsuit, and maybe get five bucks back. But really, come on. If you went to see Rob Schneider's The Animal because David Manning of the Ridgefield Press said it was good, you deserved everything you got.
My rule of thumb with print ads for movies is, if I read the blurbs from the critics and not one of the publications that the critics are writing for sounds at all familiar to me ("You'll laugh your teeth out!" -Jonathan Washington, The Crabtree Gazette), then the studio is so desperate for good press, they'll take it from anywhere, and thus this is a bad movie and I shouldn't see it. If one or more of the publications is familiar, but none of the names of the critics is familiar ("More fun than a barrel of monkeys in lingerie!" -Harry Lowery, ABC News), then it's probably pretty bad, but maybe worth a rental. If a lot of big named critics are giving it the thumbs up, then it's probably pretty good (which is how Ebert and Roeper almost convinced me to go see The Devil's Rejects).
Obviously, this isn't a 100% accurate predictor of good and bad movies, but like I said, it's just a rule of thumb, and certainly more effective than just trusting the word of David Manning.
- I'd been to ABA Games before (it's a Japanese site, but there are English versions of all the pages, and the translations aren't too bad), and played one of the games, but PA recently posted a link to it again, and I had some extra time, so I downloaded a bunch more of the games and tried them out. There's a lot of pretty fun, imaginative, cool-looking shooters here. Parsec47 is the most straightforward and conventional of the bunch, though still a fun way to kill a few minutes. I loved the look and speed of Torus Trooper, though. This one's a racing shooter, where you have to rocket down a tunnel as fast as you possibly can, blasting enemies out of your way and avoiding pitfalls and obstacles while trying to add time back to the clock that's constantly counting down to the end of the game. In terms of the setting and controls, it reminds me a bit of the old Atari shooter, Tempest, although of course Tempest didn't have the high-speed racing element, or the cool updated vector graphics of Torus Trooper.
In Gunroar, you are a tiny gun-boat with a surprising amount of firepower. The controls are unconventional and a little tricky to get used to; if you move the boat while holding down the fire key, your gun will remain at the same angle. If you move without firing, the gun's angle of fire will change dramatically. The controls are touchy, so getting an accurate bead on your enemies while avoiding the incredible amount of flying bullets can be a challenge.
Tumiki Fighters is a clever little game. It's a 2D side-scroller and you're a toy plane shooting down other toy planes that are trying to shoot you down. The interesting element here is that after you've destroyed an enemy, you can catch the falling wreckage and add it to your own ship. These bits of other ships both protect you from being immediately killed if you crash into something, and also sometimes fire an extra and automatic stream of bullets at remaining enemies.
Anyway, fun stuff. I wish I could make games like this. And actually, on each page, the developer lists the tools he/she used to create each game, so maybe I should check that stuff out and get to work!
- Cinematical posted a link to The Encyclopedia of Lesbian Movie Scenes, and I just had to pass that on to you folks. (That link is actually to a list of the scenes most recently added to the encyclopedia; the site's home page is here.) I'm, uh, going to have to check that out in more detail, but as it's not really work safe, I'd better wait until later.
- Thanks to Yagathai for this list of The Best Burgers in Old City. I may have to print that out and take it with me the next time I head out there.
- A film noir vampire movie, told in a non-linear fashion, in the style of Point Blank, starring Lucy Liu and Michael Chiklis?! Um, sign me up for Rise! I can't say I'm as excited about the participation of Sebastian Gutierrez as Mr. Brunton is (I haven't seen any of Gutierrez's movies, but I heard really awful things about Gothika, and I hated the original version of The Eye, so I can only imagine what the remake will be like), but still, this is sounding pretty awesome. Sadly, there are no US release dates listed on the IMDB for this movie yet, but hopefully that will change.
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