Eh, there's a point where "the whole point is these annoying characters do things you don't care about while whining incessantly and generally annoy you for two hours - can't you see!!!" is simply code for "we dare you to sit through this". There is a responsibility to actually try to appeal to some real-world…

So did Scott really quit?

I was thinking "young Ethan Hawk". Someone that can alternate  between roguish and menacing and even "faux-emo vulnerable" if absolutely necessary. But "dorky lesbian housewife"? Uh, no.

If it's not a love story, what the hell is it? Without some kind of underlying framework for the series of fights, it's just kind of "…and some stuff happened, and some bloodless CGI splashed around, and then it ended." That's less a movie than hanging around the video game section at Best Buy.

So when the chemistry on a show is "wrong" (that is, the pairings that would seem genuine aren't kosher with the target audience, such as gay or mixed-race or, say, the alpha male and the fat comic relief), who owns that? Initially I would say it's just shitty writing and direction, but maybe it's just bad acting? The…

Yes, that seems to be part of the basic theme - magic is returning, and the people who it affects really don't understand the new rules or the consequences of the pieces they do learn to use. So they are forced to deal with the difference between their folklore-infused legends and the actual processes. Dany wanted…

Huh - I have the total opposite feel. The game is about the atmosphere, the scenery, the environments. The actual gameplay is OK, the NPC interaction poor-to-tolerable and the quests perfectly functional. But the appeal is the feel of the game, and is such much better on the big screen, sitting on the couch, using a…

Eh, I think by now everyone knows Powell was just in it for the parking space. The second it got real (and they made him do his puppet dance in front the UN) he couldn't get out fast enough.

They do seem to move a lot of books. I do wonder how many of them are actually read, though.

I own a copy and have tried to get through it several times. But there just that off-putting tone, like I'm being scolded by someone whose knowledge of the world comes seems to have come from pamphlets handed out at the bus station.

Eh, it's more a B+. There's still potion-huffing that too central to combat, the melee is OK but not great, the 3P is a vast improvement from Oblivion (i.e., you can actually play with it) but still sub-MMO level, and it's rather ugly in the NPC department. Still, it's fun overhearing people talk and have it actually…

I dunno; a lot of those seemed to be almost-deliberate attempt at returning to the comfort of hidebound cliches rather than any kind of narrative "need". Matrix headed back to "rebels versus empire" nonsense. Star Wars wanted to be a "chosen one" snorefest. First Contact was a kind of return to "aliens as commies"…

That seems silly. So much of "accepted" sci-fi (psionics, gravity manipulation, no relativistic effects, humanoid breedable "aliens") is as magical as Harry Potter. While a division, that, say, differentiated stories with tight internal logic (so maybe not science, but you can see it from there) and pure…

Grantland? I guess it's not always that shrill, but it's got smug like a blueblood watching OWS updates on a 72" TV.

Still much cheaper than killing them, as the lawyers and courts involved making sure you don't kill the wrong guy cost much, much more than simple warehousing.

Eh, not sure they're really selling "some day you'll be rich"; more like "it's better to serve in heaven than rule in hell". The very existence of rich people enables to existence of rich people things, which in theory makes everything better, even if you'll never get to do much more than visit. But to the far-right…

What makes me smile inside is knowing somewhere, someone out there is jackin' it to stills from this thing.

Al and Peg Bundy. What kind of red-blooded American wouldn't want a dad who scored four touchdowns in a single game? None, I say. None at all.

Yeah, I only come here for the alt-text. It'll be hard to ever beat last week's, but this one is a game effort.

I just want to say that you need to find a place for this pic on the front page for like, forever.