Few people have heard of the Japanese hit, Katamari Damacy, which has several awards for its ingenuity. It has also spawned the three sequels: We Love Katamari(PS2), Me & My Katamari(PSP), and Beautiful Katamari(Xbox 360). The gameplay is simple, roll a ball around collecting anything that is small enough to stick to it. The player goes from rolling up coins and candy all the way to meteors and planets.
The game has a very quirky and upbeat feel to it. The almost obnoxiously happy music may drive a lot of players running. The story is odd to say the least and a little ridiculous. All this said, I do own and enjoy every game in the series. This game fits a very specific niche and I can’t recommend it to everyone. Read more…
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So Quentin Tarantino’s joining the (pretty much) direct to video revolution (let’s be honest–eighty-two screens is NOT a “theatrical release”.) with the film he’s “presenting”, Hell Ride.
Though his role in this one is limited to that of executive producer–which means he probably got a cut of the truly anemic gate (it’s made just short of two hundred thousand bucks so far) and procured a few of the “stars” willing to show up in this clunky little nightmare.
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As predicted, Lane Kiffin lost to the San Diego Chargers.
The Raiders (1-3) had a 15 point advantage over the Chargers (2-2) at halftime, but were outscored 25-3 in the final quarter of play. This marks the second consecutive week the Raiders have blown a game in the fourth-quarter.
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Despite owning a DVR, I still watch a lot of commercials. Certainly not as many as I’d watch otherwise, but it’s unavoidable - sometimes you just want to enjoy some live T.V., because there’s nothing on your playlist except some movies from HBO that you plan to watch “someday” and some travel show that you don’t 
remember recording. (Also, if you’re really lucky, several copies of the same episode of Family Guy because DirecTV’s system simply cannot understand that you DON’T NEED TO SEE EVERY AIRING OF THE SAME EPISODE.)
Now, if you watch a lot of T.V. during times when your judgment is impaired - and we all do - it’s best to keep your wits about you, because these ads can sound great until you really think them through. Take, for example, the approximately ten different services who offer to buy your gold “scraps” from you.
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The world has officially turned upside down, folks, and I’m absolutely gobsmacked to discover that, for once, I agree with the xenophobic hyperreactionary forces of Australia’s culture police.
See, a while ago, the Aussies put out a horror movie called Dying Breed, inspired by the legend of the “Pieman”. The Pieman, in a very Sweeney Todd-style fashion, escaped with a group of prison inmates back in the 1800s into the Tasmanian outback and subsequently ate them. Fast forward to the modern day, where a foursome goes forth into said outback in search of the Tasmanian tiger. What they find instead are the living human descendents of the Pieman, who, of course, eat human flesh.
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Celebrities love to get in trouble. They’ve probably spent more collective hours in jail than the rest of the population, especially if you count Robert Downey, Jr. They seldom engage in truly freakish crimes, but it’s still amusing to watch how they always, invariably, fail to get punished the same way anyone else would.
I could mention O.J. Simpson, but I won’t.
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Well, the election season is really heating up. It’s impossible to avoid discussions about politics even if you want to, and believe me, I really want to. I’ve been disinterested in politics for as long as I can remember; logic, common sense, and normal human behavior don’t seem to have any place in its world. It’s frustrating.
That’s why we need normal humans - really funny normal humans - to comment on politics and keep us informed. Jon Stewart started the tradition with The Daily Show, and while I’ll always be grateful for his formula, it’s just not as good as its spinoff.
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In some situations, one out of four is good.
But, when it comes to winning football games, it is not.
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Microsoft is teasing the new user interface for the Xbox 360 here. Here’s a quote from one of the videos.
…and that once you have that content you have this ability to do great new things with it. So it’s not just “I want to listen to music,” but I want to play the music, and the walls between that, you know… disappear.
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So Empire Magazine has released a list of the top 500 films of all time and–surprise surprise–The Godfather has topped the list. Rounding out the top five are Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Empire Strikes Back. The Shawshank Redemption and Jaws. This list is compiled by 150 directors and 50 film critics and over 10,000 members of the public, which makes me wonder why they weight film critics’ word so much harder than directors and regular people’s.
As a film critic myself, I’m definitely happy to hear that critics word carries so much weight, especially in a filmmaking society that’s growing increasingly hostile toward film critics. After all, how many filmmakers have you heard lately saying “this film is not for critics”? You know what? Every film is for critics. Everyone’s a critic—it’s just that some of us bother to get our words in print.
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