I don't think Rockstar was going for a Tarantino vibe; I think they were genuinely trying to repulse and sicken the player. I don't think they ever wanted the player to think Trevor was simply a cool "edgy" character, or that the torture scene was anything but awful.

I'm just posting here to wholeheartedly agree with you on Bully, easily my favorite Rockstar game. I really do hope they do a sequel, maybe at a liberal arts college or something. I always loved the scale of that game, and I think a sequel could really milk the possibilities of a fully realized small college/prep…

I never not the sense that he was redeemed or on the road to redemption—I honestly felt this dysfunctional family was just being played mostly for laughs. I'm not sure where people are getting this Michael redemption thing from.

No. Well you could, but then you'd just get all the grim-dark without beautiful modern design elements and dreamy synths,

One of the things I love about "Manhunter" and certain stretches of "Thief" is that they almost seem like extended episodes of "Miami Vice" shot at a very high level. It's almost as if they're set in the Vice-verse. While directed by Taylor Hackford, "Against All Odds" also seems to be set in the Vice-verse. There…

I enjoy the Mass Effect morality system, even if it doesn't factor in all that much in the direction of the main story arc. However, I prefer some of the non-Bioware systems.

They should cast the voice actor of Dr. Orpheus from Venture Bros.

You a college boy or something? I bet you think you're pretty smart! Think you can outsmart a bullet? What do you say we find out? Huh? I'm talking to you!

Poor Milwaukee: so far from God, so close to Madison.

I find it amusing how fast food ads are like the celebrity equivalent of an average teen's first fast food job. Simulated or real, you will be exposed to a fry vat.

Oops, never mind.

I was going to recommend that as a companion piece before I saw your comment. It's weird how "Fallen Angels" barely registers as an afterthought in so many discussions about "Chungking Express," and yet, even though it's essentially comprised of the cut storylines from "CE", "Fallen Angels" is the better film. I would…

It's weird to me that black metal is still talked about like it's this new scene. I was a sophomore in high school when the Nightside Eclipse came out and the Norwegian stuff had been pretty well established since '91. I'm on the downward slope to 40. When people act like it's the new trend, it's kind of like someone…

Wow, and I thought the first one of was nasty pile of shit…

Well, they are the villains, but there is the whole South Park "both sides are just as bad" shtick, where you're forced to slaughter populist revolutionaries by the boatload. Granted, they were sort of by-products of the right-wing horror show that was Columbia, but it kind of annoyed me in the way "but both sides are…

Bioshock Infinite, in its over-simplified way, certainly attacks the notion that American "exceptionalism" is an unquestionable good in the world. Pretty much every historical topic it deals with is critical of U.S. domestic and foreign policy from the 1860s on. That isn't to say it's anti-American, but it's certainly…

They got priced out of the Seattle spirit lodge market.

There's a bit more to eighties music than hair metal. And there was plenty of subtle and intelligent music if you ventured out of the VH1/MTV/radio vortex of the time—these arguments usually assume that popular music was only what was in heavy rotation on television. And there was plenty of insanely dumb pop music in…

The Dark Knight one with the Joker actually looks pretty cool.

Terry Jones was actually the group's attack dog with respect to the BBC's interference, and was in many ways the group's most fervent and least-compromising supporter—this is one of the reasons he later fell into the director role on the films. If Python had a spiritual leader, he was it. But he was also considered…