This game kept me hooked because it’s willing to be what it is without over-extending. The mechanics are a refinement rather than a bold reinvention. The story balances critique with down-the-center genre storytelling. And the pacing lets you savor the atmosphere a bit more than the previous entries, with their more…

See also how I found the Hannibal TV show wonderfully campy at times precisely because it was so over the top, and Bryan Fuller knew it was over the top, and still wanted it to be sincere and straight-faced.

And I think Sontag got that wrong because the gay men she referenced in her original piece KNEW when they were being too much. They could conjure up camp because they understood the point of it. It’s why John Waters could create those films with those characters.

That would solve a lot of problems, but (as you probably know) the Democrats have a serious problem with the senate’s electoral map. Enough low-population states are solidly red that we are probably looking at a right-wing majority in the chamber for the rest of our natural lives.

I love gel pens! I do find that my handwriting with a good pen is a blend of print and cursive because of that.

Fountain pens are a niche item, for sure, but they’re making a comeback thanks to brands focused on inexpensive, low-maintenance options. For around $30 you can get something that gives you virtually the same writing experience as the status symbol brands.

And unless the focus of writing goes from being able to communicate with others to just being able to communicate with our future selves, that makes print inherently more practical.

If people don’t learn to write cursive they won’t be able to read it either. So much would be lost.

I understand some people find cursive faster/easier, but if that were the universal experience cursive wouldn’t be this far into decline. It’s not as of this trend only started when laptops entered schools.

From Software’s games seem to encourage a strange mixture of masochism and elitism. And I’m not above it. Soloing Ornstein and Smough feels good in part because you’re always playing a failure montage inside your head, picturing the fight like the instant replay in Super Meat Boy.

This could be interesting. The focus on ultra-violence makes the project sound like a relic of the early aughts, when torture porn and “Asia Extreme” were in fashion. But Zahler has more going for him than that.

Former first-year composition teacher here. The surprising part of this story is not that rich people find ridiculous ways of getting their know-nothing children into fancy schools. It is that all the socially acceptable methods were apparently not enough: expensive tutors, ghost writers for important essays, legacy…

Lying on your back to shoot up through floorboards WAS pretty great, though. Same with the Rambo-style spiked branch traps you could set.

Instincts was a good time on the 360. The first half of the game makes you spend so long skulking through the grass and firing silenced shots up through floorboards that the powers are incredibly cathartic. Forget this stealth crap, I’m going to leap a ravine and punch that sniper across the map.

Why wouldn’t we have been excited for Iron Man 3?

Alternate title: Be Okay with Giving Game Companies Interest-free Loans.

I went through this experience with Red Dead before the game’s online component made its debut. I was excited for a western world that would reward Skyrim levels of exploration, but despite the incredible detail that went into the game’s world the whole thing just felt cumbersome and dull. I would finish a couple of…

Alita on the other hand is an original work not backed up by the awesome might of the largest media corporation in the world and, despite very positive reactions by moviegoers who have actually seen it, will struggle with gaining the box office numbers necessary to justify a well deserved sequel.

This seems like more evidence that sites should just get rid of user reviews. Most of them seem to be written by trolls and illiterates, and whatever traffic they generate is not worth the way the degrade the entire idea of criticism. The concept might make sense for online stores, where you can verify a purchase, but…

The Academy may need to make more specific rules about the theatrical runs for streaming releases, just to keep Netflix honest, but the divide between theatrical films and streaming is more complicated than Spielberg is acknowledging.