Archive for May, 2008

What happened to M. Night Shyamalan?

What the heck happened, M. Night Shyamalan?
I just saw the ad for the new M. Night movie. It’s designed to look like some kind of andromeda strain movie.
“There appears to be an event happening,” a man intones. This, according to our statistics, is the blandest, most uninformative, passive-voice piece of advertising ever recorded in the [...]

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Gameplay Cliches

Gameplay cliches get a lot of chatter, but when the game is successful and has a core experience that people enjoy, no one says a word.
Case in point: Gears of War.
Mine carts.
Ammo boxes that are strewn around abundantly.
Crates that contain ammo boxes. Also strewn around at every juncture.
Lava levels.
Gears of War has all of these [...]

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Napoleon Dynamite and other dance scene movies

Time to break open the scope on this blog a bit and chat a bit about movies — not overtly fanboyish movies like Blade but movies in general.
You see, today I was speculating about a new subgenre of popular non-musicals. Outsider movies that feature a “big finish” dance scene. Specifically, Napoleon Dynamite and its lesser [...]

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