Mr W Phallus

Well it depends how you classify yourself as a 90s kid, I was born 92 and although I count myself as a 90s kid, really I was only sentient for the latter half. Anyways pokemon came out in Europe when I was 7 so I'd say that makes it a generation z thing. But if you're generation Y I'd have thought you were a bit too old for the whole pokemon boom when pokemon cards were the bane of schools everywhere, even if you were still a kid for most or all of the 90s.

Hey screw you guys that's my generation you're talking about. We had Pokemon at least!

Whilst I agree that shit movies are by no means a novelty, I do think the situation with Hollywood in particular is getting worse and worse. And sure there are still good films being made but they get drowned out by all the Hollywood crap. I'm fortunate here in Manchester because I have a great arthouse cinema 20 minutes down the road (which I have still yet to take advantage of) but back home I sometimes have to travel up to an hour to see a good film because the local cinemas are all filled up with crap like Twilight or Yogi Bear or whatever high-budget crap you could care to mention. Oh and the cost. It has become far to expensive to go see a film these days.

http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201102/the-day-the-movies-died-mark-harris I enjoyed reading this article, thought I'd share it. What's your take on the modern movie industry?

I dunno I didn't realise Belle & Sebastian were Scottish until I read it somewhere.

http://uk.kotaku.com/5764704/dead-island-movie-already-optioned Executive 1: 'Hey check out this new game it's been getting a lot of attention, maybe we should buy the rights?' Executive 2: 'Interesting, what's the premise?' Executive 1: 'Oh it's just generic zombie fare and the only novelty is a game-play mechanic that in no way translates to a cinema screen. In fact it's a standard feature of pretty much every zombie film ever made.' Executive 2: 'But you said it's popular right?' Executive 1: 'Oh sure everyone's talking about it.' Executive 2: 'Well the stupid masses will go see anything if we pump enough money into advertising, let's buy it.' Both: Evil laughter

Finally, someone got Vatican City. Sort of.

Ok, just wanted make sure. In fact i'm a little dissapointed, I was looking forwards to exercising my superiority complex.

You know Swiss is a nationality right?

Oh duh that was just me being retarded when I did the maths. I was adding the 70 years from 1870 to the 100 from 1900-2000 for some reason. Yes I do suck at mental arithmetic.

Germany is just Martin Luther then the Kaiser and then Hitler. Well Germany as a unified nation has only existed for a bit under 200 years (I think) so technically you've covered all the big points right there.

Least we know that EA isn't neglecting their other quality franchises: http://uk.kotaku.com/5764470/youve-been-awarded-a-medal-of-honor-sequel

Ahah Wales made me laugh. And since this is fast becoming a general geography knowledge thread you guys know about sporcle right?

Geography is not my strong point at all so it's kind of annoying that there's no give up or auto-complete option, otherwise how am I supposed to learn? Got there in the end after a lot of trial and error though.

I'm guessing this is what you mean by different? Took Tuck It's a pretty small difference and as far as I can tell it's mostly in the length of the 'uh' sound although I'm finding it pretty difficult to reproduce myself. If you are recording something I'd suggest putting the words into sentences so that a) you say it more naturally and b.) it's easier to tell homophones apart.

Oh I didn't mean visuals as in graphics, I meant as in the direction. Not sure how much it is to do with the fact the animated movements and expressions feel unnatural, and I'm also probably being overly critical in light of the amount of attention and praise it's been getting. Anyway the point is, sure it's one of the best game trailers I've seen, but that's not really saying a lot. As a short piece of footage or a film trailer...decidedly average.

Same as roof; with the 'too' sound. There's a reason why hoof and huff are spelt differently.

I've watched the trailer several times now, and to be honest I don't think it's as amazing as everyone makes it out to be. The Lost-esque music is excellent though and kudos for having the balls to show a kid being harmed, but take away that music and the shock factor and you're not left with anything special in terms of visuals. It doesn't help that the animation is less that perfect. As for the game itself, I'm finding it hard to get excited about zombies right now. The only zombie game I really want to see is one where a city is procedurally generated or contains at least some element of randomness (different doors being locked/unlocked etc), objects can be moved about the world to make barricades or to access otherwise unreachable areas and the only aim is to survive with whatever you can find and it supports online co-op with up to 16 players (or even more). Degradable weapons sounds cool though and I like that the emphasis is on realism in the weapons you find. First-person melee combat could be a bit iffy though.

That reminds me I got to about 10 minutes towards the end of that film once and the dvd started skipping. Damn you love film! Still need to re-rent it.

Discovered this gem today thanks to Radiohead's blog. Can't wait for King of Limbs.

The Eagle is based on a children's book though so it's not surprising it's a PG-13. One thing that really puts me off going to see the film though is the fact they felt the need to change the title of the book. Apart from the fact 'The Eagle of the Ninth' just sounds better, if the the producers really felt that audiences couldn't handle a title with a whole 5 words in it, it doesn't give me much confidence in their intended audience.

Very serious.

“Patrick [soderlund - EA driving and shooting game boss]" Do they really lump those two genres together? And they could at least go for the catchier title of 'Head Over-compensator' Drifting more on-topic I find it difficult to believe they can't afford the resources to develop both Mirror's Edge 2 and Battlefield 3 at the same time. If they showed a bit of initiative they'd realise that BF3 will sell well regardless, and they might as well use most of the no-doubt huge advertising budget for BF3 on projects that aren't getting released into the overly-saturated Modern Warfare Shooter market and instead will face no direct competition from Activision.