nsps

Well, Gamestop automatically added the free shirt to my pre-bonus order. The question is, do I want the shirt, or the cards? Has anyone ordered since the offer was on the page and, if so, was there any sign of what size the shirt is? Also, anyone play the game at the GDC? Only a month left! Woo hoo.

It played four times in the cut I saw.

Yeah, no one likes Saw. I'm not even sure why it was distributed. How many times to they play Nat King Cole singing "The Christmas Song" in the final cut of 2046, by the way?

Has 2046 actually been finished? I saw it at Cannes and was a bit disappointed with the cut, although it was indeed beautiful, as is to be expected. Even with Tarantino as president of the jury, it didn't win anything. Anyway, I never heard that it was actually released. What country did you see it in?

I'd suggest MAKING SURE you see The Aviator in the theater, to see it on film and really see the colors of Robert Richardson's cinematography, which uses traditional two- and three-strip technicolor processes to get the feel of the time. Plus the production design overflows with details. I've seen it three times.

Interestingly, I can say with some certainty that the original wasn't in French to begin with and was translated, possibly with the same site, into French. So we're getting the translation of the translation. Singer/songwriter Dan Bern (or whoever ran his Web page) once did that with some of his song lyrics, resulting in utterly hilarious echoes of his original words.

1) The reason he became upset in the first place was that the guy was using a dry broom (he tells the plane designer whose name I can't remember to clean the floor with wet brooms from now on). A (mildly) obsessive-compulsive friend of mine confirmed that dry brooms are incredibly unsafe, and also said that the dog issue, as well as other ones, were very accurate. 2) The flashes into the future are of what Hughes's mental status would become show the triggering mechanism of the problems that are becoming increasingly difficult to suppress. Also, since the sweeper is an old man, as he looks at Hughes he is partly showing Hughes his mortality and his future. In Hughes's later life, he locked himself into his private theater on top of his Vegas Casino, so it has multiple meanings there. The flashes aren't meant to be flashbacks of Hughes's memory, but representations of his emotional state. Scorsese must have felt (perhaps wrongly, given your confusion) that the best way to inform the audience of his character's thoughts were to use images of future occurrences in which these feelings were brought to an extreme. Hope that's mildly helpful.

Before Sunset may be my favorite work of his, so I'm glad it made you re-access Linklater's hackiness. The Newton Boys is his only bad film in my opinion, but that isn't to say that his other works aren't without flaws. I thought School of Rock was great as a piece of traditional, formula entertainment, and loved the look of Waking Life, though I can see how it could be seen as tedious. Anyway, I think "Before Sunset," which I've seen twice, shows just how talented he is as a director—it looks simple, but the real-time conversation structure could have easily become a disaster. Also, I just started reading the book, and what I've read so far is very cool.

Just thought I'd let you guys know that I did get it to work, even if I had to go to a Windows 98 machine, use some self-booting nester program and burned with DOS instead of doing the Nero disc image. Anyone else had similar problems?

Seeing as this topic moved to emulation a bit, I wonder if anyone can help me with this burn I'm trying to do. So I just dusted off the Dreamcast to finally attempt some emulation, starting with the NES. I got Nester, which is supposedly the best NES emulator for dreamcast (any differing opinions?) and then tried to use DCFactory to compile the thing, then burned the image on Nero. As far as I can tell, I've done everything that DCFactory requires. Is there an easier way to get this to work? I've already used about 5 CD-Rs and none of them have booted successfully. Thanks to anyone who can offer advice.

Speaking of emulators, you can download a disc image for a DC version of ScummVM, a SCUMM emulator that lets you play the LucasArts adventure games that run on the Maniac Mansion engine, as well as some other companies' point-and-click games. http://www.scummvm.org/ They're also supposed to be making a GRIME emulator for Grim Fandango, but they don't work on it much and I don't think it's ready yet

If these are all you guys want, why not just mug someone for the $50-100 bucks you need to buy them? Then at least you're not a murderer. And if you want to test the theory that a generic homemade shirt would be better, there's a plague of them on ebay and you can pick your color so that it will make you Scarlett Johansson fuckable.

The only games that haven't been mentioned that come to mind are Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 & 2 (one probably being my favorite). These came out on a bunch of consoles (and PC I think, I know 3 did), but the DC port is considered the definitive one. Crazy Taxi is fun. While the arcade mode is a bit repetitive, the time/puzzle/move based section has a bunch of cool obstacles. If I think of anything else no one mentioned, I'll post again.

The only Lynch films that I've really enjoyed are Mulholland Drive and The Straight Story. Blue Velvet is pretentious, sophomoric and overrated. But the comparison to Linklater doesn't make any sense. At their core, films like "Before Sunrise" are about communication and self expression, while Lynch isn't at all interested in that. I love School of Rock, but am even more appreciative of Linklater's intelligent, non-commercial work. It's not hard to follow like much of Lynch's work, it's just a different form of cinema with less-to-no focus on plot. Just because many people can't accept that doesn't mean that it isn't a good film.

There are certain directors who are much more reliable than actors. I've learned to rarely trust that a film will be good based on its star, no matter how many great films they've been in. You can't even always count on the screenwriter. While I agreed with Kingz back when he said Kevin Smith is a hack, this isn't at all true in Linklater's case. First of all, the word hack implies working for money and doing nothing interesting or original artistically. I don't think Linklater can be accused of working only for money, given that his conversational style isn't always accessible, and "Before Sunset" made "Before Sunrise" the lowest-grossing film ever to have a sequel (according to a quote that I think might not be entirely true if you take some foreign films into account). The listening booth scene in "Before Sunrise" is another beautiful moment that comes to mind. The super-8 sequence at the end of Slacker is one of the most beautiful moments in film, by the way. To enjoy a trademark Linklater film, however, you need to be in the right mindset.

Agreed. They're the only sports games (other than a weird obsession I had as a child with Tegen's wonderfully clumsy RBI Baseball for NES) that really have a pull on me. As for Sam and Max, I actually didn't play it very much before quitting, but later I came back to it and enjoyed the fantastical versions of scuzzy tourist traps and the Americana. It's definitely not the best adventure games, though. Anyway, I'd say that the largest hype versus quality differential goes to Golden Eye. One-player mode was boring as well as awful and the four-player mode I was suckered into at parties was awkward and disorienting.

In terms of the poor sound you mentioned, you'd be better off keeping ambient noise, even if it's just hiss, in, rather than cutting to complete silence in between your lines. This is completely true. Had it been chocolate, I would have worried.

I'm a big Kaufman fan, but I've heard this particular adaptation wasn't his best work. And Linklater's great, so hopefully this one will be good.

When a fellow MS-hating friend of mine talked about why he liked Nintendo, I used the company's shady practices to get Sega out of the market before the Genesis, which ended in a lawsuit, to point out that Nintendo wasn't all that great. But my friend's point was a valid one: At least they stick to games instead of trying to control every aspect of electronics, like MS and Sony (and doesn't the "soft" imply software?). Also, I don't know of any particularly shady practices Nintendo has engaged in recently, but would be happy to learn.

I just finished it, after ending early and rewinding many, many times, and have to agree that the game is indeed, "a blast" and "fun." (It didn't overtake Grim Fandango as my favorite game ever, though.) The whole Real Time aspect is a nice shift from the scenarios when a boulder is about to crush the town, but if you don't walk away from an area, nothing happens. There are lots of things to keep straight, especially before arriving in Vienna, and it's rather exciting to make sure you do so before running out of time. Does anyone know about the film shoot? I found online that it was done in front of a blue screen, so is the main thing it was used for rotoscoping actors? What is Mechner up to now (I don't think he had anything to do with the latest PoP)?

Thanks. I assumed that that was how it was supposed to be, but wanted to make sure it wasn't an error.

So I got it, and it is indeed quite cool. It runs on Mac OSX's classic emulator, one quick question though: Are the cut scenes animated, or just a series of stills that change every few seconds? I assume that's the style of the game, but want to make sure that the emulator isn't just messed up since I think the technology was a little better at the time.

Even "$"? Dude, that just blew my mind.

To be fair, SoccerDude's picture fails to show the backside of the character, which is a feat of minimalist clothing engineering. They even have a close-up to show it off.

http://www.cogswell.edu/cgi-local/jobs.cgi?MODE=vpsychonauts On the Doublefine news site, Tim says they're going to have a playable version of the game. Anyone going today?