Ironik

Are you going to rename Pocket D "Captain Quaalude's"? Because, seriously, of all the songs in Tron, that one is ZZZzzzZZZzzzz....

Word on the street is that he's reshooting it. The 3D conversion apparently looked really good, but he wants to take it even further. Are you ready for a CGI DiCaprio? Three-DiCaprio, as we like to call him.

No way. Repeat after me: "9/11." The filmmakers would be lynched.

In the "Really Big Thing" category, I just bought (but haven't read) Helix by Eric Brown. Both the book and author come highly recommended by sources I trust, and the concept of a multi-generation starship crash-landing on a giant helix-shaped structure they have to cross in order to survive is straight out of classic sci-fi such as Niven's Ringworld or Chalker's Well World.

A series of books that are just straight-up adventure which I love and have a cool setting is the Destroyermen novels by Taylor Anderson. The first book is called Into the Storm. The series is about two American destroyers and a Japanese battleship in a naval battle during WWII which encounter a bizarre storm that transports them to an alternate Earth where dinosaurs never went extinct and humans never evolved. It's just good old fashioned widescreen epic Edgar Rice Burroughs-type adventure.

I just read Peeps by Scott Westerfeld which has a unique take on vampires and why they exist. It starts as if he's treating vampires as a form of superhero (which is why I bought it) but it becomes something quite a bit more involved and perfectly fits into your "beyond the curtain of common knowledge" criterion. It's also speedily entertaining.

For this you want Robert Charles Wilson. Specifically, give both The Chronoliths (if you can find it) and Spin a try. Talk about man getting trapped in the machinations of creatures he can't comprehend... wow, yeah.

That's a pretty decent summation for remake rationalization. Of course, in Hollywood the formula is: does it have enough name recognition to make money? Followed closely by: Can we milk a franchise out of it?

I'm more of the "be truer to the source material" kind of guy when it comes to remakes, a la The Thing. Which, I'm sure you're all tired of hearing me say, is the single best example of a remake ever made, because it pulls off the astonishing feat of being true to both the original short story and the quite good 1950s film made from it. The prequel coming out soon will actually be more of a remake of the Christian Nyby (Howard Hawks, really) movie.

The real trend in upcoming remakes is modern reinterpretations of classic tales. The Arthur legend, the Three Musketeers, Beauty and the Beast, Shakespeare, etc. However, I think 2011 will be dominated by two things: comic book adaptations and sequels/prequels, with very little else in between.

Yeah, it's actually a pretty fun little flick.

Cage's line, "He'll turn you into a pig that just looooves physics!" is one of the best of the year.

Heh. Well, I suggest you avoid Generation Hope in the former case and Chaos War in the latter.

Ahh-hahahahaHAHAHAHAHA - snork - gasp... hahahahahaha!

Although COntact's story is terrible, it is one of the most technically brilliant movies ever made.

A good transfer of Cinemascope and Vistavision films will also look tremendous. Criterion probably has plenty of those. Black Narcissus was always a favorite to watch on laserdisc back in the day. Anyone interested in classic films that look stunning should pick that one up.

That's what Ultimate was. Too bad it went off the rails so badly.

All this time I thought you were a guy. Huh.

At least this proves I wasn't defending you out of misplaced chivalry: it was honestly on the merits of the argument.

TrueMetal wanted me to "DIAF" for responding with equal harshness to the critics. For those unfamiliar with internet lingo, DIAF means "Die in A Fire."

Is that my position or my person being attacked? I contend it's the latter. Defensive? Sure. But only *after* being attacked personally.

Honestly, I haven't such ill behavior since the jranger crowd imploded. Maybe they're back, I don't know, but their dismissive attitudes towards other players (and I don't mean me, here, but the others who've been attacked as noobs and idiots) is annoying in the extreme. I'm not a "stand there and watch it" kind of guy. Never have been.

Well, I can't discern the true reason behind the snarkiness, but I could detect it in two simple words. I can guess at intent, but that should be ample evidence to you that I don't just imagine I'm seeing things which aren't there. Parsing language is part of what I do. I used to have a job where it was *all* I did. If I weren't paid money for it, I'd do it anyway. Those folks are actually saying what I claim they're saying. Just pretend I'm a dog who can hear things you can't.

That's *precisely* what he did. He was slightly more verbose than "you suxxor" and he slipped it in between other blather, but that's the essential tone of all the posts on this page. Telling people "it's not rocket science" and "you used wrong tactics" is insulting, period. The "you idiot" is implied, but it's there. This is reading comprehension 101. (See what I did there? I didn't insult you directly, but I *implied* that you just don't get it. As my mother always says, "It's not just *what* you say, it's *how* you say it.")

Definitely. Some. A few. A small minority. But most? Hardly. I'd even go so far as to say that a solid 99% of level 50 players at least grasp the basics enough to use inspirations. At lot of these replies by Adeon seem to be telling Bad Influence -- who's been around quite a while -- that he's stupid for not using inspirations, or, if he is, then using the wrong inspirations. Come on, that's insulting on the face of it, veteran player or not. Don't defend douchey behavior.

No I'm not. I'm just tired of the self-appointed Play Police acting all elite and insulting everyone with their "learn to play noob" attitude. So I will take the opportunity to call it out and insult them back, because it's no less than they deserve. Lots of people in this thread were called liars for reporting different experiences than the OP's. Lots more have been called losers for not being able to beat Trapdoor easily, the way you did in your video. That aggravates me.

All experiences are not *your* experiences, and the bald fact is that you got lucky in your encounter. There weren't multiple bifurcations, they didn't spawn at an increased rate, and Trapdoor never hit you once. Hell, *any* AT with any build could solo Trapdoor under those conditions. If he had actually hit you once, you would've been almost dead. If he'd also stunned you, you *would* have been dead with his second shot. If there had been multiple bifurcations you wouldn't have been able to out-damage his regen, and while chasing those spawns down he would've had ample opportunity to send you to the hospital. And you know, many people in this very thread have reported those things happening. I just think it's annoying that some of you who haven't encountered such things keep telling those of us who have that we're wrong and it didn't happen or we don't know how to play.

That's what's got my pretty pink Hello Kitty panties in a bunch.

See, that addendum was snarky, contextually. You know it and I know it, even though you didn't do anything to especially call it out.

So the implication is that endgame content will ignore such game mechanics as scaling mobs and the difficulty slider? I think some people would cry foul about that.

I don't think it's unreasonable to set Trapdoor to "Easy Mode" when someone is solo and then ramp up the difficulty as more teammates are added. As I mentioned before, on some builds he is ridiculously, even impossibly, difficult to fight, yet when adding just one other player that exact same encounter becomes trivially easy. That says "badly designed" right on the box.

That's the very attitude I've been railing against in these recent threads. The worse problem is that these guys don't even understand that they *have* that attitude.

I just lie there awaiting the inevitable mapserver message.