Newgrounds.com — Everything, By Everyone.

At 5/5/14 01:51 PM, X-Gary-Gigax-X wrote: But the same sort can be said of video games: dominantly male audience, mostly male interests.

That's a self-fulfilling prophecy though...

At 5/5/14 02:09 PM, CheezNapkin wrote: stop making everything about yourself and have some empathy for once in your life you idiot scumfuck

I love you CheezNapkin, don't ever change.

At 5/4/14 09:58 PM, HeavenDuff wrote: You do know that the 4 elements existed before Avatar, right?

Yes we all know about Captain Planet.

At 5/5/14 12:56 PM, Sense-Offender wrote: Fuck! What the fuck?! Why didn't Cal fucking shoot Daniel? I would have popped that fucking cherry when he pushed Sarah against the car.

To be fair he's probably never actually shot anyone before.

I'm just hoping his introduction means we're finally one step closer to getting rid of boring-ass deadweight Big Dick Paul. Though unfortunately if this is like any other TV show the opposite will be true and this is going to end up sparking some drippy love triangle even though it should be incredibly obvious at this point that Sarah don't need no man.

Alison can be kinda frustrating sometimes. Felix, though, lol.

Gavaris is the only other member of the cast who can keep up with Maslany.

I never really got a chance to play any of the big console games from last year, but over the past few months I have finally gotten to play some of the great indie stuff so I'm glad you made this thread.

At 4/28/14 12:08 PM, Jackho wrote: -What's your pick for the game of the year 2013, or your top 3-5?

1 (tie). Gone Home
1 (tie). Papers, Please
2. Guacamelee!
3. Rogue Legacy

-Which games (both bad and good) are you most likely to think back on in the future? Which stuck in your mind the longest? Which are you likely to replay?

Gone Home has really stuck with me. Using familiar adventure game mechanics, the game builds a really low-key and affecting story about a family entirely out of the various bits of detritus they've left around their house. It's totally brilliant and I've never seen anything else quite like it.

Papers, Please is also a great experience, albeit an increasingly stressful and harrowing one. The responsibilities become so complicated, the rules and consequences so arbitrary and unfair (my mouth went agape when I got my pay docked for putting my son's drawing up on the wall), the decisions so impossible, that the whole thing ends up playing as absurd black comedy. It somehow manages to be incredibly fun, frustrating and depressing all at the same time.

Also, all those silly games with meters that track how good or evil you are should take notes because Papers, Please is what moral choice in games actually looks like.

-What game or games do you feel did not get the attention they deserved in 2013? On the other hand what games do you feel were overrated?

Well no one else has mentioned it and you didn't list Gone Home so let's go with that (please tell me you just forgot about it or haven't heard of it and you're not one of those "it's not a game" people).

-Which console do you feel had the best year in 2013? What do you think of the newly released consoles?

I haven't even seen one in real life yet.

-And lastly, what are your hopes for the future in gaming, and what is your opinion of 2014 so far?

Gone Home and Papers, Please have actually made me really optimistic about the future of gaming for the first time in a long time. I hope things move further in that direction, with more prominent examples of games that break away from cliche and present a greater variety of mechanics and stories and themes. More games that challenge our emotions and worldviews and whatnot, not just our reflexes.

Also that The Last Guardian actually exists and is released in an uncompromised state. Though really this one's more of a desperate prayer at this point.

Adam Sandler is really kind of brilliant when you think about it. He's gotten to a point where he now actually gets paid millions of dollars to essentially just take himself and all of his buddies on various lavish vacations in exchange for putting in only the most minimal amount of effort possible. Dude's living the American Dream.

At 5/2/14 02:08 AM, HeavenDuff wrote: Sandler's movies have a pretty simple pattern. The guy is and under-achiever who isn't respected even though he's sooooo amazing. Eventually his girlfriend leaves him, and then the character finally achieves his true potential, win a trophy girl and sometimes prove wrong the bad people who judged him when he wasn't doing anything.

Those are the old Adam Sandler movies. In the new ones he's an obscenely wealthy but still down-to-earth, lovable family man with an improbably hot wife/love interest and a gaggle of adorable moppets who exist to provide bug-eyed reaction shots while he and his loser friends fart on each other for 90 minutes, briefly pausing somewhere in the third act to wax sentimental about how important family is after all.

At 5/2/14 12:38 PM, SubparTony wrote: I like Drew. She's fine in book no matter how many movies she will make with Sandler.

She's also the only female lead Sandler has ever had any actual chemistry with.

At 4/29/14 03:47 PM, Mismo wrote: Oh I forgot to mention Chrono Trigger and Earthbound.

How could there possibly be any other answer but these.

At 4/29/14 01:45 AM, Jackho wrote: Tempted to choose In the Mood for Love or a Godzilla film but I wouldn't know where to start there, so I'll change it up a bit and pick a film I've been dying to give another rewatch ever since I fell in love with it just over 3 years ago: Black Dynamite.

I should have known you'd pick this movie. Your knowledge of late '00s blaxploitation parody/homages is only outmatched by your zest for kung fu treachery!

Great pick, especially since we haven't done a straight-up comedy yet. This'll be a fun one for sure. If you guys want you might also want to check out a few of the real '70s blaxploitation movies this one riffs on, like Shaft or Super Fly (both of which are directly parodied in several scenes of BD). It's not at all necessary in order to find the film funny, but it definitely adds to the experience.

At 4/29/14 04:56 PM, Atlas wrote: Stars Wars VII Cast Announced!

Heh, looks like Oscar Isaac and Adam Driver are being shot into OUTER....SPACE after all. Uh oh!

Geez, not a big Columbo crowd I guess. Anyway, @Jackho go ahead and pick a winner!

At 4/25/14 04:42 PM, Radaketor wrote: So you want me to give you proof about the fact that there are feminazis who want to eradicate men but you don't want me to go get the proof at the site that has more feminazis in the whole internet. Makes sense.

I believe he means evidence from, like, actual real life. Do you know what that is?

I like a lot of the Expanded Universe popes but I think they're only semi-canonical.

At 4/24/14 03:44 PM, Richard wrote: It's really pathetic and sad that people are still trying to troll a site that lost it's relevance and significance after 2010.

2010? That's being pretty generous.

At 4/24/14 04:26 PM, Viper wrote: They're okay. But Nevermind is far from their best album out of their 3. To me it'd go: Bleach, In Utero, then Nevermind.
And I'd probably put Hormoaning in between the last two and Blew and Incesticide between Bleach and In Utero.

Is it weird that my favorite Nirvana album by far is MTV Unplugged In New York? I guess after that I'd go: In Utero, Bleach, Nevermind. They're all good though.

Since they only have three real albums, if we're going to do the whole ranking thing then wouldn't it make more sense to list our favorite songs? I guess I'd say:

1. About a Girl
2. Polly
3. Pennyroyal Tea
4. Sliver
5. All Apologies
6. On a Plain
7. Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle
8. School
9. Dumb
10. Where Did You Sleep Last Night (if there's a more gut-wrenching version of this song out there I haven't heard it)

The line-up everyone seems to know is Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl, and Krist Novoselic. There was also: Dale Crover, Aaron Burckhard, Dan Peters, Chad Channing, Dave Foster, Jason Everman (was also in Soundgarden for a bit), and Pat Smear.

And Sir Paul McCartney!

At 4/23/14 01:56 AM, VGmasters wrote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf7lGtS75Gs

I don't really get it. 5/10

The Zombies - This Will Be Our Year

*sniff* 1969 will be Don and Sally's year, right? Right?

At 4/20/14 11:05 PM, Sense-Offender wrote: Yeah, Happiness Machine is my favorite. I highly recommend Masaaki's series, Kemonozume and his movie, Mind Game. Neither are available in the U.S or Canada, but you can find them. They're great. I have another series of his, Kaiba, which I still haven't watched.

I'll be sure to check out more of his stuff, the guy's amazing. Didn't he also do The Tatami Galaxy?

He also apparently wrote and directed an upcoming episode of Adventure Time, which, holy shit. I can't wait, I'm plotzing. I'm really loving AT's willingness to bring in outside talents for guest episodes like this, David O'Reilly's episode from last year was also great.

At 4/20/14 10:05 PM, Natick wrote: gotta find a time to go see it in the uptown theater as well, i loved johnathan glazer's music videos and debut gangster film, sexy beast

I haven't really seen any of Glazer's other stuff but now I'll definitely have to. Though I do love this batshit candy bar commercial he made with Holy Motors's Denis Lavant.

Yeah, I don't need to take a quiz to know which South Park character I am...

So since I was the only other person who participated last week I guess I'll be picking this week's film. So let's watch...

Wings of Desire (1987, Wim Wenders, West Germany/France)

An arthouse staple and one of my all-time favorites, Wings of Desire follows angels as they move invisibly through modern-day Berlin, bearing witness to human life and providing comfort when they can, until one of them falls in love with a human trapeze artist and considers giving up his immortality to be with her. Oh yeah, and there's also some stuff with the late great Peter Falk playing himself and a concert performance by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.

The movie might seem esoteric or lofty or even pretentious at first, but I promise it ends up being much more grounded and human than you'd think, and the more you're willing to stick with it the more rewarding the experience will be. I was agonizing over picking between this and Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love for quite a bit so uh, yeah, I hope you guys like this one.

@Auz
@Sense-Offender
@Natick
@TheMaster
@Slint
@Sekhem
@Jolly
@Atlas
@NuScarab
@EclecticEnnui
@Makeshift
@HeavenDuff
@ZJ
@Darthdenim
@Oolaph
@Jackho
@darkjam
@Nebula
@Jester
@SapphireLight
@SG3
@Dean
@Piggler
@Snuff

The season premiere was great. As usual, anything with Alison is solid gold.

Also, HELENA!! I was legitimately shocked by that.

At 4/20/14 02:02 AM, PotHeadParadise wrote: a person that knows that this government is giving you pebbles when you should be getting ROCKS.

The government? Dude, you are completely missing the incredibly explicit point of that video so you can project your own inane conspiracy bullshit onto it.

The massive wealth inequality in this country isn't the result of some shadowy cabal subverting the system from the outside, it's the system itself functioning exactly as it's supposed to, right out in the open. That's the problem.

But of course that would mean that our society's problems are actually systemic and complex, that we're all complicit in them and that they require nuanced solutions. Which, like, fuck that right? Much simpler and easier to believe that all our problems are caused by a concrete, external force of eeeevil beyond our control like we were living in a Saturday morning cartoon.

At 4/20/14 04:14 PM, PotHeadParadise wrote: MY sources came from DavidIcke.com.

Ah dammit why do I always fall for the trolls.

At 4/21/14 12:46 AM, Oolaph wrote: Vashti Bunyan - Just Another Diamond Day (1970)

Vashti Motherfuckin' Bunyan! That's some brutal shit right there, I don't know if this thread can handle it.

Seriously though, this is also one of my all-time favorites, and a perfect album choice for the beginning of spring (I mean, technically it's been spring for like a month, but whatever, you wouldn't know it from where I'm at). So if you guys really want to get the most out of this album, then listen to it outside. Really, it makes a difference.

At 4/20/14 07:17 PM, WaffleVoyager wrote: I'd consider something like Gone Home or The Stanley Parable art, but then the cool kids don't consider them games anyway.

Those aren't the cool kids, those are the least cool kids.

At 4/20/14 08:13 PM, Piggler wrote: Video games involve a commercialized form of art

So does every other medium. The existence of a commercial mainstream doesn't invalidate the entire medium, or you'd also have to say that film and music and books and everything else aren't art.

In video games like in all those other media, yeah, art and commerce overlap. And also like in all those other media, there are mainstream games that lean more towards the commercial and there are independent games that lean more towards the artistic. If the likes of Gone Home or Papers, Please or even a major studio work like Shadow of the Colossus aren't "art themselves" then I don't know what art is.

Ah balls I accidentally only posted the last part of what I was writing. Anyway:

I watched Genius Party and thought it was a pretty mixed bag overall, though it does show off an impressively wide range of animation styles. Masaaki Yuasa's "Happy Machine" is the only real standout here, but it's great, full of vibrant imagination and evocative visual and sound design and surprising poignancy, never straying from the perspective of its infant protagonist.

I liked a couple of the other shorts too, though. Shoji Kawamori's "Shanghai Dragon" plays around with anime cliches in some really fun ways with its literally snot-nosed child savior character, ending on a weirdly sweet twist with the badass action heroes gleefully joining the kid on his flights of fancy. In "Baby Blue," as was sometimes the case on Cowboy Bebop, Shinichiro Watanabe's knack for fostering atmosphere gets him a lot of mileage out of what's really a pretty thin story.

Other than that, I dunno. "Doorbell" is clever, "Genius Party" is fun, "Deathtic 4" is blandly inoffensive, and the less said about "Limit Cycle," the better. I guess other than "Happy Machine" these all mostly feel like sketches and doodles rather than fully formed concepts, but it was still a fun, interesting watch.

I also got the chance to watch Slacker this week. Obviously a movie like this is going to be a little scattershot, but for the most part every segment is entertaining or funny or even genuinely profound in its own way, and they all flow into each other nicely to give the film something of a loose structure.

If you haven't done so already I'd definitely recommend checking out the film's heady spiritual sequel, the animated Waking Life. At the very least it's an especially good movie for today's holiday (no, not Easter), I'll leave it at that.

At 4/13/14 10:13 PM, Sense-Offender wrote: ("I should have stayed at the bus station", "the next person that passes us will die within a fortnight", "quit following me!" "Madonna's pap smear" and a few others were particularly funny).

The whole scene with the JFK conspiracy theorist is great. I also love how the characters are named in the end credits ("Budding Capitalist Youth," "S-T-E-V-E with a Van"). Though I think my favorite exchange in the whole movie is:

"Sorry I'm late."
"That's okay, time doesn't exist."

And I've definitely known young people who can run their mouth about politics and act like they're more knowledgable than they are. There was a bit of that.

Ugh, yeah, the "Dostoevsky Wannabe" reminds me of some of the kids I went to school with (and I desperately hope he doesn't remind anyone else of me).

Speaking of the "should have stayed at the bus station" guy

Who's played by Richard Linklater himself, by the way. Which makes his whole speech a clever little meta-commentary on the structure of the film itself.

At 4/20/14 07:17 PM, TheMaster wrote: Going to go see Locke and Under The Skin tomorrow.

I saw Under the Skin yesterday and, well, the title is very apt. It's really something special. I was actually going to specifically recommend it to you in this thread, it really seems like your kind of thing.

At 4/14/14 12:38 AM, Piggler wrote: I think it's suppose to represent those who are so unthinking and utterly brainwashed by the status quo and government propaganda, that any radical ideas or creative thoughts just bounce off them or they automatically denounce them because it contradicts what the system has told them. I guess it's trying to show that so many people are crushed by "real life" and in a way, too far gone, or beyond the reach of reason.

Eeeh I wouldn't go that far. The film obviously has a great deal of sympathy and affection for its outsider characters and tries to capture their world non-judgmentally, but that doesn't mean it absolutely takes all their words at face value. Some of the ideas expressed in the film are obviously more insightful and genuine than others.

I think the movie is far more interested in language and communication and the whole Austin counterculture milieu itself than in any of the particular viewpoints being expressed. I mean, considering this movie along with Dazed and Confused, Waking Life and the Before movies, as a filmmaker Linklater is clearly at least as concerned with how people talk to each other as he is with what they're saying, if not even more so.

So I listened to the Mclusky album and I really dug it! I don't really know what to say specifically, this kind of music is pretty much right up my alley but I'd never heard of this band before. So thanks!

As far as the back half of the album taking a dip in quality goes, I don't know what you guys are talking about, pretty much all of my favorite tracks come near the end of the album, the biggest standout for me being the Pavement/Pixies-ish "Alan is a Cowboy Killer."

TUSK!

At 4/20/14 11:48 AM, BrazilianDude wrote: I am the Walrus.

Shut the fuck up, Donny. V.I. Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov!

Well, based on your list...

In Bruges
Drive
Spirited Away
The Iron Giant
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
Perfect Blue
Pan's Labyrinth
A Clockwork Orange or Dr. Strangelove or anything by Kubrick, really

Though if you really want to see something different, check out Aguirre, The Wrath of God.

Also:

At 4/19/14 09:58 PM, Sense-Offender wrote: Paprika
12 Monkeys
the Machinist
Jacob's Ladder
Oldboy
Dark City
Moon

Yuuup. Except for The Machinist, that one's kind of one of the worst movies I've ever seen (though Bale's physical performance is appropriately stomach-churning). And I haven't seen Jacob's Ladder so I dunno about that one.

At 4/17/14 09:11 PM, DoctorStrongbad wrote: Have they ever done anything useful or helpful?

No, mostly on account of they don't exist.

Brilliant, all those YouTube guys like that are just awful. Anyone who's actually interested in games criticism should, like, learn to read.

At 4/14/14 06:44 PM, Sense-Offender wrote: Genius Party

Cool, always nice when someone picks something that's already in my Letterboxd watchlist. Two things:

1. Since the first anthology is already feature length, why don't we just leave that one as the official MotW so as not to have multiple features. Obviously anyone who wants to watch the second anthology and talk about it here anyway should totally feel free to do so, but you'll only have to watch and talk about the first one to be included in next week's pool.

2. Just a reminder that it's probably not a good idea to post streaming links...

Oh yeah, also any new folks popping in because of the @ mentions might want to check out the post linked to in my sig to get a general sense of what we're going for here.

@Sense-Offender will be picking this week's film! Woo!

I'm gonna try to watch Slacker tomorrow and I'll post some thoughts then.