This is an R-rated western ninja movie starring Korean actors and a lot of gore. I don't mind dismemberment and splashes of blood, but there are a lot of brutal training scenes that are not my thing. Supposedly it received bad reviews, but in my view, it does exactly what it aims to do, which is to provide violent action entertainment.

Ignacy Trzewiczek writes about interaction in his upcoming boardgame 51st State. What I find interesting is his distaste for negative interaction in a combo game; the attraction of a combo game is in assembling and exploiting the synergies - having opponents interfere with them could be extremely frustrating ( Read more... )

After reading Adam Roberts shallow critique of the late Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, I was left with a feeling of dissatisfaction. The WoT series inspired similar attitude to that which Kubo Tite's Bleach manga inspires: residual loyalty to a once decent work, turned into enjoyment of the implausibilities, plot holes, and failures of ( Read more... )

Okay, so I haven't read George RR Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire", the very popular fantasy series known for its grittiness, main character death, and the apathy of the author to complete it.

But after reading this insightful review, I just had to share. The writer claims that it isn't gritty compared to what has come since, and that it's not main ( Read more... )

It was described to me as a "childish movie", and it lived up to those words. I liked the retelling of Egyptian legend, but found Jeff Goldblum unconvincing and distracting. The movie was a bit all over the place; not really my thing.

Sci-fi action/horror is like popcorn - light and enjoyable, definitely not nutritious. Pitch Black was a Vin Diesel vehicle with an Australian cast. I liked the pieces of scientific structure in the movie - solar cells, 22 year periodic eclipses, nocturnal creatures that are injured by light - I liked the uncommon-in-Hollywood accents, and the ( Read more... )

I dislike the humour of a lot of CGI movies, it's usually glib, exaggerated and reliant on pop culture parody, but Despicable Me had me actually laughing in places. There are some clever elements (the kids' story, the bank of evil looking for return on investment) and authentic moments. The minions weren't irritating like they could have been. I ( Read more... )

Hasbro games are garbage. Their flagship mainstream games Monopoly, Risk and the rest are ignorant of good design, and have been rehashed well beyond ridiculousness. People have fun with them in spite of the design. The Risk computer game I bought many years ago was also trash. Hasbro also bought over and then shut down Microprose, the brilliant ( Read more... )

I was urged to watch Scott Pilgrim by friends, and it looked okay - over-the-top comic-book action, video game references - and the reviews were middling. So I watched it ( Read more... )

When I was little, the police were the good guys who caught robbers and thieves. I respected them because they were on "our side". No longer ( Read more... )