Mr W Phallus

The Pirates of the Caribbean sequels aren't bad, just underwhelming. I was disappointed because it could have been so much better.

http://board.pressxordie.com/topic/606-merge-the-dark-knight-rises-and-other-bat-topics/

Fellow North Easterner

Well in that case I diagnose you with a bona fide case of not liking Dickens. Just wanted to make sure you weren't making the same assumptions that I did.

Which one(s) have you tried reading? I had always wanted to read Dickens novel then when I was 15ish we studied Hard Times in class. Luckily we stopped about 2 chapters in because it was awful and I was convinced I'd never pick up a Dickens ever again. Skip ahead a couple of years and my friend (who had also suffered through Hard Times with me) decided to read Great Expectations, since he was applying for English Lit. like me and wanted to broaden his literary scope in preparation for uni interviews. He told me it was much better than Hard Times and that he was really enjoying it. Sceptically I read the first few pages and confirmed that it was infinitely better than Hard Times. I still haven't read it yet but I plan to one day. And the moral of the story is: don't judge Dickens by just one of his book.

Beat me to the punch, definitely a polarising film. It may be the nostalgia glasses doing their thing but I've always been a fan of the 1998 Godzilla remake. Haven't watched it in a long time though, I'll have to crack out the VHS when I'm back home.

Heart of Darkness was good but I found at times he got a bit too abstract with his prose, and it became incredibly hard to follow at times. On a related note: 'Conrad is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in English, though he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties' (wikipedia). What a guy. I think it was his third or fourth language as well, although I don't have my copy of Heart of Darkness to hand to confirm that.

Argh I'm such an idiot. I googled 'ocean videogame' when trying to work out the '*pacific one' and that came up in the results, how did I not make the connection?

I'm not sure if you're posting that as a serious answer or if you've got the grid refrence wrong cos Yante got that one just before you as I think he was joking. It made me laugh anyway. @Hot Heart yeh I saw someone else had got it. I was thinking 'start of [the word] ocean' but it was pretty contrived. Annoyingly that then meant I didn't get the game that I put when it came up later.

That makes sense, I thought best put them in spoilers so other people can do the quiz after me without ruining it for themselves by accident. I make that 20 on the first puzzle and 15 on the second unless you any more wrong ones. Edit: Just realised what 6E of puzzle 2 was. /facepalm Edit 2: And 3D. Plus I lolled at that one when I got it.

That's a game? Well it's going to take a while to type them all but: First Puzzle: Puzzle 2:

This is cool but I can't get them all. To avoid people just posting random ones maybe we should do it in order? Except I can't get the first one, damn.

I love Orwell's prose. It's deceptively simple, so that you could even be fooled into thinking you a reading a (for want of a better word) 'lowbrow' novel, yet the underlying themes are incredibly sophisticated. Animal Farm is also great, and I really enjoyed Down and Out in Paris and London which is stylistically quite different, being (semi)autobiographical, but still a great read.

Ok thinking about it maybe it is a bit much to be self-funded. But still by modern standards a $500K budget is pretty small and it is his second film so it's not like he's some unknown guy who wants money to make a film.

1. It's already done the festival rounds, I don't think it was meant to seem viral. 2. The estimated budget was only $500,000 for a start, and since Mr. Oizo is a successful music producer he probably funded it himself.

What is a viral? Rubber? I think not. It's directed by Quentin Dupieux (aka Mr. Oizo) and features music by Mr. Oizo and Gauspard Auge (one half of Justice).

Mario Kart on 64 and SNES. Wii is fun but some of the power-ups are ridiculous (I'm looking at you Bullet Bill) and they took the whole elastic band/catching up thing a bit far with it. Can't really comment on Double Dash, only played it a little and a long time ago.

I love a good SP game, but once I've completed it it will be quite some time before I want to replay it again. A good MP on the other hand can last a much longer time so I play both. It's worth pointing out that my favourite MP games are firstly all shooters, and secondly either MP only (TF2 and Shadowrun) or built with a strong multiplayer component in mind (Halo and Gears). I also prefer multiplayer that is team-based, especially objective based game modes like CTF since they encourage team play, so I guess like someone else said it's not so much about playing against people but playing with people. As for local MP nothing beats Mario Kart. I find most modern games lack the universal appeal that Mario Kart does so well and since not all my friends are big gamers (especially here at uni) it doesn't matter to me so much that they don't have local MP.

This is all that comes to mind.

I think you can absolutely describe Scott Pilgrim as clumsy. Just because the visual effects were well done doesn't excuse incredibly unlikable characters, weak story (when you shoot for a D movie plot and FAIL, there's a problem), and irritating attempts at nostalgia. For starters Edgar Wright's direction is excellent, and anything but clumsy. The script is hilarious (everyone in the audience was in hysterics throughout the film when I went to see it at the cinema). Cera, Culkin, Winstead and indeed the entire cast all provide great provide great performances. And as you said the visual effects are very well done and the entire film looks great. Whether the characters are likeable or not is so subjective that there's not even any point in arguing over that, suffice to say I don't agree there. I'll admit the story falters a little towards the end because of the re-shoot which put it more in line with the last book but other than that the plot is elegantly simple and it's remarkable that Wright successfully managed to compress the 6 books into a mere 2 hours. As for the 'irritating attempts at nostalgia' I presume you mean the numerous references to video-games etc. How exactly these could be annoying I'm not sure but I can't think of any that stood out as not fitting with the rest of the movie. So like I said, like it or not - and I'll freely admit it's not everyone's cup of tea - clumsy is the last word I'd use to describe a film so higly polished and streamlined.

It occurs to me that most of my experience with rage quitters is from playing games like Halo, where it's usually small teams and no one can join once the game has started. In something like TF2 I don't even notice people rage quit because the teams are so big, people can drop in any time and there's usually an auto balance option so it totally depends what you are playing. Also it's understandable that someone would want to quit playing a game like TF2 where a match lasts much longer whereas Halo your looking at about 5 minutes depending on the map and game mode and the worse you play the quicker it's over.

Like it or not there is no way you can describe Scott Pilgrim as 'clumsy'. Last bad film I can think of is the latest Resident Evil but then again I tend not to watch films unless I'm pretty sure they're going to be good.

But the developers have already made a fun game (presumably if people are playing it). Just because you are losing doesn't mean you can't enjoy it. I find if I'm losing hopelessly in something like Halo (which usually happens because one or more team mates has quit the game) then I just accept I'm not going to win and concentrate on smaller, more achievable goals such as doing best out of my team. If you're really getting dominated by the opposing team and they're much better than you then playing against them is going to be much more beneficial than quitting and gaining nothing anyway.

Whilst there aren't really many genres that I outright dislike I find I tend to get bored pretty easily by genres I'm not particularly good at, which I suppose is mostly laziness one my part. Even for the genres I didn't select, though, I can usually think of an example of the genre I enjoy. In racing for example there's Mario Kart, Burnout, Stars Wars: Episode 1 Podracer, Quantum Redshift (when I was younger at least, haven't played it for years), I even get out my copy of PGR every now and then, so I suppose I'm more open-minded than I give myself credit for. EDIT: As if to prove it, I didn't select Racing or Fighting but PGR and MvC2 are both in the last 5 games I played on my gamercard down there.

Deep Impact Real Life Huge spoiler there.