In my dreams, I see the two of us alone in my golden sub­ma­rine, while up above the waves my dooms­day squad ignites the atmos­phere.“
Wil Wheaton on Scar­lett Johansson


Speed Racer

If you’ve seen the trailer, then you’ve already got a taste of it, but basi­cally this is a live-action car­toon. The visual effects and the super-saturated col­ors aren’t just in the rac­ing scenes — the whole movie looks like a pho­to­shop lay­out. To be hon­est, it kind of both­ered me at first. Thank­fully, the story and act­ing is good enough that I quickly stopped car­ing. The movie is pep­pered with ref­er­ences to the car­toon, and it’s gen­uinely funny. The cast is excel­lent, and while they’re a bit one-dimensional, they’re pretty direct copies of their car­toon char­ac­ters, so it’s to be expected. John Good­man espe­cially stole the show for me — his char­ac­ter is great, always har­rumph­ing and grunt­ing around. As far as I’m con­cerned, this movie is excel­lent, and it almost redeems the Wachowski Broth­ers for the Matrix sequels.


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This is a test of a really lengthy caption.

An awesome painting by Frank Frazetta

An awe­some paint­ing by Frank Frazetta

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This is a test of a really lengthy caption.

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An awesome painting by Frank Frazetta

An awe­some paint­ing by Frank Frazetta

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GTA4 is Pretty

In a nut­shell, GTA4 keeps every­thing good about the pre­vi­ous games, while dra­mat­i­cally improv­ing most of the annoy­ances. The dri­ving is slightly more chal­leng­ing — if only because it’s actu­ally dif­fi­cult to drive at a rea­son­able speed that won’t result in you fly­ing through the wind­shield in a head-on col­li­sion — but when you pull it off, it suc­ceeds in cap­tur­ing the feel of speed in a way I haven’t seen since out­side the Burnout series. The shoot­ing and fight­ing engines have been com­pletely redone, and actu­ally work this time. The annoy­ing micro­man­age­ment aspects of San Andreas, where you had to grind at the gym to keep in shape are gone, and the con­stant court­ing required to keep your girl­friends happy have been sim­pli­fied, so that now your friends will call you every now and then to sug­gest going out to a vari­ety of in-game enter­tain­ment, includ­ing magic shows, bowl­ing, darts, and of course, strip clubs. More impor­tant than any of those, though, is the story. There’s a real nar­ra­tive attached to the char­ac­ters in this game. You have the sense that they existed before you came along, and they’ll still exist after you leave — well, the ones that are still alive, any­way. The story just feels bet­ter, and the world feels more alive. It’s com­pelling to the degree that I find myself think­ing about it at odd moments dur­ing the day, in the same way that the story in a good book will cap­ture me. Long story short: if you enjoyed the pre­vi­ous games at all, you’ll love it.