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  2. @bollemanneke maybe you should spoiler tag your post, in case someone hasn't seen the movie?
  3. Despite its aging hero, an Indy 5 could've been a big success, if the end result hadn't sucked so damn hard. (Countdown to @Jurassic Shark's rebuttal...)
  4. A pattern is emerging... A BIG, SPOOKY face! And this is the one that haunted me as a wee lad... And here's one that hung on the wall of a local video store back in the day that creeped me the f*ck out... Look—if you DARE!
  5. Today
  6. Here’s a playlist I made with all of the unreleased tracks. I’ll probably upload a couple more after work cause I’m sure I missed some. Most of the sound effects and dialogue are gone.
  7. Earlier this week, Charles Cecil gave two talks at Reboot Develop in Dubrovnik, about remastering the first Broken Sword game. Here's a couple of things I remember - all from memory, in my own words, so hopefully I'll manage to convey his meaning. The idea behind the remaster is to not only bring the game back for those who already know it, but to also make the genre accessible for newer generations of gamers. Quoting Richard Cobbett, he said that adventure games have been backward looking for too long and should stop treating their own genre as retro. Revolution rely heavily on playtesting, and early on were shocked to find that modern audiences couldn't handle the interface. He says they got ratings of 50%-60% and lower (when their games used to reliable score 80%-90%) for their initial remaster attempts because contrary to what seemed obvious to them, newer audiences don't intuitively understand the point and click concept. He also says though that he believes the interface itself is sound, and the general Broken Sword interface is still valid today, but the presentation has to be updated not just for modern audiences but modern systems. He also didn't want to add a straightforward walkthrough hint system, because players inevitably choose the path of least resistance, and once you start using a hint system, it's almost impossible to stop yourself from going back to it instead of trying to figure out a puzzle yourself. Instead, they added some mechanics to nudge people in the right direction, e.g. automatic hints that nudge you in the right direction when you're stuck for too long, and items/clickable hot spots that disappear automatically after it has been established that they're of no more use. However, all of this is optional, as the game will offer a choice between classic mode and "story mode" and allow seamless switching during play. They're also making very slight changes to some other things, mostly because game development was always rushed to meet deadlines and things were overlooked that would otherwise have been fixed, like that pipe that the clown used to escape although it didn't extend all the way to the top of the wall (as already mentioned in the Kickstarter campaign). He was adamant though that they changed nothing substantial, as he himself wanted to preserve the original game, except in cases that he would always have fixed if he had been able to. They also went through the script and (maybe - I'm not sure) made very minor tweaks, but were happy to discover that it still held up today; he said that one of his original motivations was that women were heavily underrepresented and objectified in video games at the time and he wanted to make a game that didn't do the same*, and that naturally they wouldn't like to release something today that would conflict with modern sensibilities, but that happily the original script was fine as it is. *) He related an anecdote about Lure of the Temptress, the first game by Revolution, published by Virgin Interactive. When the game was mostly finished and it came to choosing a title, he racked his brain to come up with a list of possible titles to send to the publisher, and added "Lure of the Temptress (this is a joke)" at the end because he found it sounded intriguing, but didn't have anything to do with the game and would be totally wrong. To his dismay the publisher loved it and insisted that they use it, and when he pointed out that it's rubbish and that there wasn't any temptress in the game to begin with, the response was "… can you put one in?" So they had to rewrite the game to add a temptress at the last minute… He also said that they would have gone ahead with the remaster with or without the Kickstarter, but it allowed them to improve some things. If I understood correctly, it was meant mostly help them bridge the gap before the console ports are ready and do a simultaneous cross platform release. The original game contains 30,000 sprites, and manually redrawing them in 4K takes 1 hour per frame, i.e. 30k hours in total, which is obviously a lot of money. The experimented with AI upscaling, but found that especially the eyes of the characters didn't work, because they would be looking in the wrong direction in the automatic upscale (because the low res sources didn't have enough information). So the funds also allowed them to either fully redraw everything or to manual touch ups of all shortcomings (I'm not sure which of the two). Here's Charles Cecil presenting a slide about how film narratives can and cannot be applied to games, before showing the idol sequence from Raiders of the Lost Ark as an example clip:
  8. "Now"?!? Lol Jessica Lange Says ‘Corporate Profit’ Is Overwhelming Hollywood and ‘So Much of the Industry Now Is Not About the Creative Process’
  9. “Micro changes in air density, my ass.“
  10. I also recommend the novelization by Alan Dean Foster. This one is pretty scary too.
  11. To those who say "You can't take it with you," I say: "Watch me!" I'm going to dig a burial chamber for me and my collection—pharaoh-style!
  12. Oh I read most books in hard copy and don’t have a kindle but use the app on my iPad sometimes for a few books and a lot of back copies of FSM that I’d downloaded in pdf from their website (always a reminder of how much better it used to be when people like Jeff were doing the reviews…). However I couldn’t wait to read about Jerry and his music plus it was just before going on holiday so ideal time to enjoy it on my travels while listening to the scores (at least those I happen to have on my phone).
  13. Oh yeah that NECA figure is superb. My Aunt picked my Kenner Alien up for me at a garage sale back in the mid 80s. It’s in superb condition, although I had to restring the arms as the rubber straps broke over the years. There’s always such cool Alien stuff being produced. And believe me, I know that pain of regret for selling things off. Although the older I get, the more it just becomes stuff I will have to sell before I go into elder care, or preferably some island off the coast of Spain or something
  14. Seeing this just pours salt into the wound... In the early days of eBay, I finally got my hands on one of these—in the box, and with the mini poster insert too. Then, years later, I thought I'd outgrown this stuff and put it back on eBay. Fool that I was! And now...regret. But I got the NECA 19" 40th Anniversary "Big Chap," which I think is the best-looking figure to date. I squint my eyes a little, and it looks like it came straight out of the movie. But I still love the Kenner, with the metallic grillz!
  15. Your powers of observation are EGGstraordinary! That’s Egghead (Vincent Price) On topic: I wonder if there’s a facehugger in there. And speaking of eggs, I have ALIEN chocolate egg molds and made this for Easter.
  16. Let me try to guess all the franchises that appear on this photo of your collection: Alien obviously; Star Wars (most of it); Adam West Batman; There's the feet above I couldn't identify to whom they belong...
  17. Watching it just now, I was surprised how much Alien owns to ASO that I'd never noticed before. No wonder the score was butchered and replaced with existing music.
  18. "The first thing I am going to do when I get back is get some decent food." [...] "Well you pound down the stuff like there's no tomorrow." "It's got a wonderful defense mechanism. You don't dare kill it." "No blood. No Dallas. Nothing." "Come on, cat."
  19. Recently rewatched 2001, this is definitely my favourite shot/moment:
  20. …and at least a dozen more that didn't come up in my Google search.
  21. Oh, well, here in Canada, it was restricted to 18+. Except in the province of Quebec, where it was 13+. French-Canadians are more relaxed about these things. lol Had this at one time. Was never a big fan of Walt Simonson's style, but he did an admirable job here. "BACK! SPAWN of SATAN!"
  22. The village. The film certainly provides lots of food for thought and obviously Rotten Tomatoes proves how utterly useless it is yet again. The casting is great as well, with special mentions for BDH and William Hurt. The whole vision of the elders is flawed, though: we’ll run away from violence in society by pretending we’re a century earlier and threaten inhabitants with violence so that they don’t leave the village, although I guess that’s part of their trauma. Okay, well, now the elephant in the room. The score. I had already heard the Gravel Road in concert, conducted by none other than the man himself, but knowing what the Gravel Road actually is, totally changes things, of course. No movie deserves such beautiful music. The desperation, the yearning… I could continue to try and find words, but nothing I write will ever do justice to it. Somebody expand it NOW so I can buy it. And thanks to the audio-describer who went out of his way not to clearly state that Ivy was blind. God, I hate it when they do that. It wouldn’t have killed me.
  23. When I was 12 I saw the poster for The Exorcism of Emily Rose and on that same night (I was traveling to the beach with my family) I had nightmares about it. It's a pretty effective poster, actually. Eerie and atmospheric without being overtly "in your face", and this combined with the word "exorcism" on the title makes a subtly but effectively scary poster. I wish more horror movies these days have posters are good as this (too bad the movie itself is meh).
  24. Absolutely. It's one of my favorite ripoffs. Just an absolute delight watching Caroline Munro pretend to be Barbarella. It also has some of the prettiest, most colorful star fields, and a fun score by John Barry.
  25. It's not only used in the seduction scene though, it's used for Feyd in numerous scenes that aren't about the Bene Gesserit at all (at least no more than any scene about Paul is about them, since they both factor in their plans). So I think it's pretty safe to consider it Feyd's theme at this point.
  26. Yep, that's a fair possibility. Although given they had a songtrack as well, it would surprise me a bit if they wanted to have the score album out at the same time - the regular joes just want all the 'normal' stuff.
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