Scrivener

Just finished watching the new Peter Pan movie (released today on DVD). On the technical side, there were some odd color pallette choices... the director just gets a little too carried away with his colors. But as for the rest of the film: WONDERFUL! Definately not your brain-cell-killing Disney fare... this is the kind of movie I remember enjoying as a kid. There's an emotional depth, complexity, and honesty that is all but extinct in todays fantasy. I know that when the film was released theatrically, a few reviewers felt the romantic overtones were inappropriate... I think they made this one of the best movies I've seen. The current crop of family and childrens fantasy - movies like Finding Nemo and Home on the Range - are actually stifling the emotional development of todays younguns. Peter Pan isn't afraid to deal with some more real world issues - like growing up, falling in love, being responsible, doing the right thing, and having fun... while simultaneously being an absolute feast for the imagination. It might be a little scary in places for very young chil'rens, but as a parent you should keep yourself open for discussion with your kids after seeing a movie like this; which has some very good morals. One of my favorite movies as a kid was the Friendly B.I.G. - scared the bejesus out of me every time I watched it, but everything always turned out alright in the end. This is that kind of movie. Sure, there's some campiness in there... but it's ultimately a fantastic family film... the kind that will never age or go away. Even if you dont have kids - Buy it, dont rent it - now. 10/10

Heh, I always wondered what happened to the first Wulfram. Guess this answers my question. Friends and I had great fun in the Wulfram 1 beta.

Just when we thought adventure games would be making a comeback all the big studios cancel the most promising projects. Bastards. Guess all I have to look forward to now is Dreamfall: The Longest Journey 2.

Yeah, I've been recording this one religiously since it first aired. Absolutely fantastic show... it's like watching a really good movie every week. Great production values, great cinematography, acting, writing. Easily the best show on television right now, IMO.

When I first heard about this I got mad that the FBI was arresting cracking groups... then a friend told me they also pirate the games... and that's why they crack them. That sucks. Personally, I crack all my games... with 500+ titles on my shelves I get really pissy when I track down a box & CD to play a game I legitimately own... then the games *still* sometimes have problems, forcing you to eject and reinsert the CD a dozen times before it accepts it. On top of that, modern copy protection schemes often have an adverse effect on game performance. Look at Prince of Persia, 75% speed increase when cracked/fixed. IMO, online registration/authentication is a much better way to protect your game. Enough people have the internet now that it makes more sense... and when a game becomes obsolete, release a patch that removes the online authentication.

I put this one off for a while, preconvinced that it was going to be garbage... and for me, that kind of hunch is almost never wrong. This time it was. Now I could have lived without some of the one-liners... but I would *almost* put The Punisher on the same level as Die Hard. That guy looks a lot bigger and meaner on screen than he does in the trailers, that's for sure. There's definately room for improvement in the sequel, though... I think we need to see a little more brutal justice... really push that R rating, eh? But then, I still dream of the day we get Watchmen, the movie... or at least the unrated DVD version of Watchmen the movie *sinister grin*. Who knows, maybe the screenplay adaptation I'm working on for a school project will see it's way into production someday? I can dream, can't I? 7.5/10

So does anybody look at this board any more? Oh well. Saw this one twice in a row this morning/afternoon. Every bit as good as the original (IMO best movie of all time) but this time there's a lot less violence and gore and way more character development and storytelling. SC could even see this one =) It's easy to tell that these two films belong together - that they make up one movie and were meant to be seen together. The only thing that bothered me were two action sequences that somehow got dropped from the film at the 11th hour. One involved David Carradine and an intense swordfight in an alleyway. I felt that this film could have used a little booster injection of blood and guts to make the pacing mesh better with the first half, but I know that we'll be getting those scenes on the single-film Limited Edition DVD. This film also has one of the most entertaining fight sequences of all time... even without the decapitations and geysers of blood from Vol 1. PERFECT 9.9/10 - Docked .1 for using the deleted scenes in the TV spots and trailers. I want my deleted scenes, dammit!!!

Interplay has been in deep stuff for quite some time, mostly due to really stupid buisness decisions. Well, this could be their first good decision in years... unfortunately it's like going to see a doctor a month after you shoot yourself in the foot. There's no telling if they'll be able to save the foot.... Anyhoo, here's the article: http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/04/15/news_6093628.html I would LOVE to see Troika take this one under their wing.

Just stumbled across this game on Wargamer. It looks like a real-world, real-time version of Alpha Centauri. Can't wait to get my hands on it as I've been waiting for a *good* modern grand-political-strategy game for quite some time. Kudos to Strategy First for helping to pick up a lot of these wonderful little indy games. SF's titles never cease to amaze me. Just something to keep our eyes on. P.S. SC, maybe you should look into having Strategy First as a future publisher. They rarely dissapoint.

Wow, I really should have been the first to post on this but I've been soo dern busy (Finishing up a board game I've been working on for the last 4 years). Anyhoo, I have both good and bad things to say about Hellboy... ultimately, I was a little dissapointed. The Good: 1. They got the look of the comic down PAT. The colors the cinematography the characters. Fan-freaking-tastic. 2. Ron Perlman is the PERFECT Hellboy. But, of course, he's great in anything he does. 3. Most loyal comic adaptation to date (Although I would argue that Hulk ties it in this category). The Bad: 1. 30% story, 70% giant tentacle attacks. What is this, a hentai? 2. A poor, poor, poor, poor, poor script. About 1 hours worth of material inflated to 2 hours with goofy repetitive action scenes. 3. The PG-13 rating means a lot of the darker more sinister comic elements are out. No blood, no suggestive themes, no mature Hellboy commentary. He's HELLBOY for heaven's sakes, not PCBOY. Please, Hollywood, stop taming down our darker more sinister comics. Ultimately, I give it a 7/10. Not as good as the Hulk, better than X-Men, on par with Spiderman. Also, I do not hold very high hopes for The Punisher. I mean, the guy looks more like Max Payne than Frank Castle. He's not the big, gruff, scary monster of a man we've come to love in the comics. It really looks more like a modern Lethal Weapon than a Punisher movie. It's too bright and... sunny looking. And it's got John Travolta. That worries me. But maybe he'll pull a little more Pulp Fiction and a little less Broken Arrow this time around? Anyway, based on the trailers I've seen it just looks... and feels... totally wrong. Sure, I'll see it. But I dont expect much.

Returner was interesting (if a little too Japanese for me to recommend to anyone but Otaku)... in any event, I'm glad to see that we're starting to get more movies that take place entirely in alien environments... ie, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. They always work in *some* kind of real-world twist because, until recently, these kinds of movies were cost prohibitive...

quote: SC HATES that movie. I can understand. Not a single one of my friends has been able to sit through the whole thing either... same goes for Peter Jackon's other two earliest works (Meet the Feebles & Bad Taste). Quite frankly, I will propose to any girl who giggles at the custard scene. Talk about one in a million... Anyhoo, I'll leave it at that.

Outlaw: While I admit that the movie was *well made* it didn't really tickle me. To be quite honest, I'm looking forward to Shaun of the Dead (www.romzom.com) more than I was looking forward to this Dawn of the Dead remake. Sure this was a helluva lot better than 28 Days Later (Which I hated) but *still* isn't half as good as the campy classic Night of the Living Dead. To better illustrate my point: If the movie were set during another time period, like the 50s, 60s, or 70s... and accompanied by lots of crazy meldramatic overacting... then the rating rises. Like 28 Days Later and Resident Evil, this one is *still* taking itself too seriously. Zombies are the stupidest and most 'not-scary' of all horror movie creatures and trying to give the movie a serious *this could happen within the realms of science and plausability* spin just makes it stupid. I'm talking about the script/storytelling. It's-not-interesting. The average zombie movie is a 4/10... or lower... see above. Above average zombie movies include Dead Alive (Best_ever), Night of the Living Dead, or the *original* Dawn of the Dead. Hence, the 6.5... I'm not exactly running back to the theatre for a second viewing.

Hey! This one actually had enough gratuitous head-exploding that it ALMOST fits my description of 'gore' =P Seriously, though... this one isn't that bad at all. I sort of miss the sea of lumbering zombies that slowly, inexorably closed in on our heroes during the first DotD but I guess these ones will do. A MUCH better movie than 28 Days Later, IMO... but still borrows too much 'super zombie' from other recent zombie flicks. And what is with the 'virus' that keeps showing up in all these movies? Can't zombies just be evil bloodthirsty, brainhungry animated corpses from HELL any more? *sigh* A little mysticism next time, please. Also, this one loses the message that the last DotD had - about the dark side of consumerism and how capitolism turns people into mindless zombies intent on only one thing... Anyhoo, SC don't see this one - It's pretty gross. All in all, it's an above-average zombie flick with lots of blood, guts, and heads exploding. 6.5/10

I have an admission to make... I love Charlie Kaufman movies. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Being John Malkovich, Human Nature, Adaptation. I've even read (and love) hs script for A Scanner Darkly... it's very sad that that script has been passed up for some other unkown writer. What a shame. Anyway, Eternal Sunshine does NOT dissapoint. It's actually a very sweet romance with plenty of little details that will entertain the observant through multiple viewings. It's got plenty of Kaufman wierdness (A great chunk of the movie takes place in Joel's head as he fights the erasure process). Unless your the kind of person who only likes movies with nekkid chicks and big explosions, ESOTSM will leave you with the same feeling you get upon waking from a really good dream. Garaunteed Oscar for Screenplay and possibly even a Best Actor nomination for Carrey (Of course some melodramatic camera whore will walk away with it like they always do - as punishment for Carrey's comedic background). Anyhoo, the first truly GREAT film of the year. 10/10 GO - SEE - IT - NOW!

I quite literally figured this movie out in the first 30 seconds. There were just too many clues. Nevertheless, the movie does an exemplary job of presenting multiple plausible scenarios... even if *I* didn't fall for it. But we all know I'm just too damn intimately familiar with cinematic storytelling (I try to watch at least 6 films a week - thank you, Netflix). For the average joe-not-cinematic-ubergeek I think Secret Window will be a fun, suspenseful Stephen King mystery. It's not quite Apt Pupil (The best King film-EVER), but one of his better film adaptations. 8/10 On a side note, it's really not *that* gory. It's on par with your typical Hitchcock suspense.

Bad news guys... the trailer went online a couple days ago and every bit of hope I had been reserving that this movie might not suck went out the window. When it was announced I was overjoyed that Alex Proyas was attached as director. He was, single handedly, responsible for the wonderful dark, serious films (among others) The Crow & Dark City. And then they brought on Will Smith to play the lead... that is, to play a detective investigating a case where a robot is accused of murdering a human (an occurrance without precident). Now how many movies do we know of where Will Smith has played the detective/cop type... pretty much 3 quarters of all his rolls... and how many of those rolls have been campy and stupid... all of them. I hoped Proyas would keep a tight leash on the shtick-monkey but the trailer has revealed that he did not. Furthermore, instead of getting another Blade Runner (And Proyas is one of the few who could have pulled that off) we get Bad Boys in Black - Attack of the iRobot Clones. They ruined it. They bloody raped the material. Instead of a dark, serious, brooding bit of sci-fi-film-noir we get an action-comedy-buddy-cop movie about swarms of murderous robots that seem to have escaped from Pixars next Toy Story project. Thank you Hollywood for ruining yet another promising bit of classic SciFi literature. What's next, A Scanner Darkly - The Musical?

I didnt like it so much. Instead of "twisted" I would recommend this movies title be changed to "Predictable" for it's bargain-priced DVD release next week (that's sarcasm btw). The characters were so archetypical that even my little sister had the thing figured out in the first 15min of the film. I don't walk out of movies as a rule, but I came darn close to walking out of this one... just thanks to how terrible/predictable/amateur the story itself is. Not much offends me more than a bad story... or bad storytelling... and this has both. Sure, Ashley Judd is easy on the eyes but this is one script that never should have got past the 'optioned' stage. 2/10

I was debating on whether to see this one right away as I think Stephen King is often weird to point of absurdity... on the other hand I trust Depp to pick good rolls.... but you just said the magic word: gory. I'm in. Review will be forthcoming.

OH-MY-GOD. SC, I had NO IDEA that the interiors would have so much DETAIL. With some lighting that will look REAL. I really hope you DO decide to apply damage maps to damaged ships... it dosnt have to be anything extravagant (No modified geometry is needed). Some exploding consoles, billowing steam/smoke, emergency/red alert lighting... and replace some textures with damaged ones. Bada-BING you're in an episode of Star Trek. I have a feeling that KnightBlade is going to be everything that Bridge Commander never even imagined it could be. Thank you SC for continually making my dreams come true. Oh yeah, and pl-pl-pl-pl-pleeeeasee give us some dialogue options. I want to at least have some remote chance that I can be diplomatic talk my way out of a situation or two.

I wish there more groups out there that released the kind of music I listen to. When it comes to music, I'm just as jaded and elitist as I am with games.Primarily my favorite artists are: 1. Delerium 2. Enigma 3. Bjork 4. Mythos 5. Robert Miles And all but Enigma have released at one worthless CD in the last three years (In some cases more than one). Delerium's last 'Chimera' was an hour and a half of what seemed like the same song... and that song wasn't very good to begin with. I would KILL for another 'Poem', 'Reality of a Dreamer', or 'Organik.' Theres just no artists out making that kind of music any more

I noticed that look on his face too, he looked really hurt. This was likely his last chance to get some long-deserved recognition for his career and the academy screwed him. I'd like to see how the votes actually stacked up. If there wasn't some flat-out fraud going on then the vote was damn close. While I *liked* Mystic River (7/10) neither the movie nor the acting was of Oscar caliber. It was, ultimately, a mediocre movie full of mediocre acting. Sean was in no way believable and acted on the same level as a high school drama student. His work in 21 grams was far superior but *still* not Oscar caliber work.

Tonight might have been the best night in Oscar history... that is, if that campy melodramatic loser Sean Penn hadn't stolen Bill Murray's oscar. Broke my Tivo remote when that was announced. Never has such a display of rage, fury, and four-letter words been witnessed in the Scrivener household. Other than that earth-rending example of gross injustice, there were no real suprises. Sofia Coppola got her much deserved Oscar for best original screenplay (Lost in Translation) and LOTR swept the awards winning every category for which it was nominated. Although I greatly disliked Monster, Charlize Theron did a brilliant job with the role and was justly rewarded. Tim Robbins somehow ended up with best supporting actor... although I am significantly less pashionate about that category I still feel he was the weakest of all the actors nominated. IMO, that award should have gone to either Ken Watanabe (Last Samurai) or Benicio Del Toro (21 Grams).

quote: I have come to trust your reviews, but for someone like me with PTSD (can't stand gratuitous gore), how gory is it? I wouldn't say its gory so much as bloody. They show Jesus being whipped and he gets beat and cut up pretty good. I have seen dozens of movies far worse than this in terms of gore - such as Saving Private Ryan or Scream. If those two films rated a 9 on the gore factor I'd put The Passion at a 7 (Peter Jackson's own 'Dead Alive holds' a gore factor of 10). The two scenes that really seemed to affect the audience the most were 1) when Jesus was being scourged by the Roman soldiers... there were some brief shots of the whips actually cutting into Jesus' flesh... and 2) the nails being hammered into Jesus' hands. But even these were portrayed in such a way as to make it more similar to a Renaissance painting than a depiction of graphic violence. The strategy here is to show you a brief scene of brutality, then cut to a shot of something else where the violence happens off-screen while the music and sound hold that previous scene in your mind. I'd say it's closer to Braveheart than anything else. The movie will obviously affect each person differently... especially if you let the music get under your skin... but the violence really is just limited to beatings and lots of blood (There's no guts or heads rolling or anything like that). I felt pretty detached and analytical while watching it, but thats what happens when you have a trained eye and watch 10+ movies a week. Hope that helps.

If you want to read my full review do a CNTRL+F search for 'Scrivener' here: http://www.aintitcool.com/tb_display.cgi?id=17065#736652 I'll warn you, that above review has got some strong language. I can get pretty passionate (Ha) myself when confronted with wonton and gratuitious narrow-mindedness, bigotry, and stupidity. The review below has been edited for general audiences. The quick hit: I thought it was brilliant... the kind of cinematic art that, while ironic, is only matched by Terrantino's recent Kill Bill. My one quibble is technical... I hated the subtitles. Even though they were used rather sparingly, the film still would have been better off without them. IMO, they were just distracting, especially since the movie did a brilliant job of presenting itself visually. The music was moving and the performances brilliant and heartwrenching (Oscar caliber performances all around). The flashbacks were carefully plotted and placed in just the right places to help maintin a certain ammount of empathy with Jesus - to embelish the fact that he was a living, breathing, eating, drinking, laughing, crying person just like YOU. Subtle use of supernatural elements tie together themes of fate and spiritual manipulation. Even Judas and the priests were puppets of the devil - who is portrayed as a pale and eerily sexless creature. We see the characteristic Roman brutality with quick glimpses of demons and spirits... there's so much more there for people intelligent and open minded enough to look for it. It's not meant to be a MOVIE so much as a window into actual events. Now I can see how people would consider this movie very brutal - it graphically depicts the torture and beatings Christ endured. Now when people say "important film" it's usually because it can't stand on its own merits as a film worth seeing again. Not so in this case... not only is this the single most important film of all time, it stands as THE most brilliantly crafted and magnicant film you will ever see. It is beautiful, wonderful, and moving. Go. See. It. Now. 11/10 I just wish more people would start reviwing this like a MOVIE instead of using the topic as an excuse to bash Christianity.