JsARCLIGHT

Not really a "movie" star but Norm McDonnald from SNL. GOD I hate that guy. If he could find a way to stand even stiffer, look into the camera more and fumble his lines off of cue cards any worse I'd swear the world would collapse in on itself. Edit: Same goes for Jimmy Fallon... I think he stole all Norm's quirks when he left.

Nope never was. I was a private, a corporal and a sergeant though.

The PC I was talking about was having the characters not say "killing children", something children would identify with and feel fear... instead they are "killing younglings". Seriously though... the Jedi rank system goes from retarded sounding to neat sounding. It used to be Jedi Apprentices, Jedi Knights and Jedi Masters. Now it's "Younglings", "Padawans", Knights and Masters. How can you have an organization with such boss top teir titles have such corny sounding entry level titles? It's like saying you have to be a Handjobber before you can be a Asskicker.

If that is the case then the Jedi lost a lot of luster in my mind. What other classes of Jedi are there? "Oldster"? It all just lends more creedance to the thought that the PT was a dumbed down, kiddie-a-fied execution. I mean "younglings" just sounds retarded.

Can someone also enlighten me on the whole use of the word "younglings" in the PT? I mean, people obviously call children "children" several times in the PT (notable instances are when Anakin is brought before the council they call him a child, when teen Anakin kills the sandpeople he kills their "children", not their "younglings"). Seems the first and only instance of "younglings" was Yoda in ep 2 and then suddenly it sticks and everyone is saying it. Is it like the term "corilleans" in the OT? The only reason I ask is that they call kids children several times in the PT, yet in the last movie it's "younglings" this and "younglings" that... I personally smell a script PC cop-out by Lucas, not willing to have his actors say "Killed Children".

I think what we should all use as a good measuring stick is Agent ONE. Agent ONE's shoulders are wider than Tom Cruise is tall and he can dunk on us all. Second question! If Tom Cruise and Elijah Wood wore a horse costume for Halloween, who would be the ass end? And would it be a shetland pony costume?

OK, so who' shorter: Tom Cruise or Elijah Wood? Who could you pick up and throw farther? (and yes I take any chance I can get to bash Tom Cruise)

Who here thinks ROTS with suffer the same fate as the other two prequels in the home market? I know that when I first saw Eps 1 and 2 in the theater (can sort of say the same about three but not entirely) I left the theater rather satisfied... but after watching and re-watching the prequels on DVD I quickly started to hate them for many reasons that I guess it took rewatching to come to light. So does this crowd think ROTS will age well or turn to vinegar?

I remember watching it years after the eighties in re-runs on late night TV. I never saw it in '88 when it came out... I guess it came out some time when I was in boot camp. From what I loosely remember I remember liking it but getting angry that I first caught it somewhere in the middle and then as a few episodes went on I wanted to see more but it stoped and started over from the first episode and then the UHF station that was airing the reruns replaced it with something else before it got to the spot I started watching it. My problem is that at the same time (UHF station and local Public TV in Chicago) I was watching Dr. Who and Red Dwarf so what I remember of the WotW show might be corrupted by what I remember from Who eps. I distincly remember that when they shot the aliens (who looked like humans) they melted (?) and I also clearly remember one episode when the aliens tried to take over the teens with hypnotic rock music.

Their problem is their success... too much too fast. I bet their bosses are demanding higher revenues, faster turnarounds and the dreaded "more of the same" requests. I put pop TV in the same mindset as two comedians stranded in the wildreness with no outside contact... sure the first generation is smart, quirky and funny but each continguous generation is less funny and more retarded as they get more and more inbread.

In my eyes the one and only plot point that is labored upon to make people believe Anakin is "evil" is his killing of the children. Personally I feel Lucas added that plotpoint and kept beating on it because it was really the only truly evil thing he does in the prequels that everyone can obviously look at and say "yep, he's done gone bad". In epidsode One he is a lovable little scamp... in episode two he is a typical whiny teenager... and in episode three he is portrayed as somehow learning his lesson and being a good Jedi and then *ping!* a cotter pin pops out and he's suddenly evil. I'm still holding out hope that we see something of the time between ep 3 and 4, so we can see how Vader gets his rep as such a badass... I mean, if all we have to go on are the movies then Vader's imposing reputation as the Empire's wicked attack dog is all smoke and mirrors. And who is actually running out to buy this thing today? I talked with a few SW geeks at my office and of the three only one is running out to buy it at lunch. The other two are still "on the fence".

I prefer to call it China-Mart myself.

I caught it... it had a definate Loren Bouchard vibe to it. I can'y quite put my finger on it but everything that Loren Bouchard does has the exact same writing style and humor in it. I like that style but it seldom makes me actually laugh out loud. It's more of the quiet "I found that amusing" sort of humor than the laugh out loud humor. I think the visual style of the show is a nice change from the rest of the Adult Swim "home made in the basement" quality. Not to knock AS but the shows they make themselves have been spiraling down in quality like a brick falling out of the sky. I mean, Squidbillies? 12 oz shi... I mean... mouse? Their writing is really bottoming out as is their animation. I hope your show gets picked up, the place needs some quality... and another Loren Bouchard show that does not get backburnered. It really pisses me off how they handled Home Movies, that show kind of got the shaft in benefit of their homebrew swill.

Just a question... but what where people expecting from the Lost Coast? All I was expecting was a simple, short demo level showing us what "could have been"... seems a lot of people I talk to and have read on the internet seem to think this was some expansive mission pack or something. Quite frankly it was a lot longer and more complex than I was expecting. I had images of a simple "arena" area in which all you did was wander about and look at the pretty things... as soon as I saw I could use the weapons and actually "play" the level I was thrilled. Then again now that I've seen those HDR rendered weapons, objects and water effects playing the street HL2 is almost a letdown.

So will the download alert you if your specs are not up to par? I know all I did was say "gimme" and it downloaded without a peep... but at the end it asked me to take a survey about my system compared to other people's. Mine ranked pretty darn high from what I could tell. I was also suprised that so many people had such low RAM in their systems.

Seeing as they are being pretty pokey about releasing an actual single player mission pack for HL2 I'd like to see them rewrite the shaders in the meantime. I mean, Lost Coast to me is Valve saying "Nyaaa nyaaa this is what we COULD have made the game look like but we had to make it run on everyone's systems so we kneecapped it". For those of us with atomic systems I'd at least like the option of having the whole game in HDR. Heck, I'd pay for it again for that option.

I Dl'ed it on Saturday and played through it. My rig ran it like budda. 1680 x 1050 full on everything. No crashes at all... a tad of slowdown when tons of stuff is going on onscreen but outside of that no issues. I thought it was decent as sort of a video game "bonus features" sort of thing. I played it with the commentary on and found it more educational than entertaining... the level itself is pretty bland outside of all the shiny pretty things in it. I wish they would repackage and re-release the normal HL2 game with full HDR support so EVERY level looks that good, sort of like what they did with HL1 and that "detail up" package they released with Blue Shift.

A bazooka named Rosebud.

I just always ask myself: Why a remake? Why can't these people just make a sequel? Rather than remake predator, why can't they just make "predator 3: similair to the first"? I mean, the Japanese have been doing it with anime for years... the chinese have been doing it with HK action movies for decades... both of them very successfully. Is it that American directors have this yearning need to "fix" other people's work? Do they just see something and say to themselves "I could have done it better" and then proceed to try? Why can't people just make something similair but not the same? There is no honor lost in making a sequel to a sequel. That logic has kept Firday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, "Living Dead", Hellraiser and the Puppet Master franchises rolling right along. They are all basically the same darn movie over and over but rather than remake the original they simply make another. Is it because they are all horror movies that people don't want to remake the originals? Is it because everything but horror is somehow seen as "high art" that has to constantly be remade? If I where a billionare I'd remake Citizen Kane with dope dealers, machine guns, T&A and explosions just to piss Hollywood off. Perhaps if someone slaughtered one of their sacred cows they'd realize how other people feel when they constantly remake movies.

I wonder how long it will be before they start remaking remakes? God knows a new idea is poison right now.

OK, the question on my (and possibly a lot of people's) mind right now: How is GTA: Liberty City Stories? Did I sell my PSP too soon or is it a steaming pile of rushed crap like all the reviewers seem to be indicating?

You mean they have never re-released Tetris since the original in 89/90? You'd think that would be a constant re-release goldmine.

OK, someone ejumacate me... what is this 8bit compatibility and why would I care? Does that mean it does not play the super old Gameboy games that you won't find anywhere outside of a thrift store or yard sale?

Just so no one dumps on my guy at work too much he bought the Micro for his son for his birthday, and outside of some clothes that was all he got from daddy and mommy. The dad was just pissed off because (acording to him) he found out he just paid $100 for the exact same thing his son already had. He was kind of disappointed in his son for asking for a carbon copy of a thing he already owned but at the same time he was quite verbally upset with Nintendo for "double dipping" (his words) hardware so close together. I reminded him how when the gameboy pocket was available at the same time as the original gameboy while they phased the older one out as was the gameboy color at the time of the pocket and the advance at the time of the color and the SP at the time of the advance. I think Historicaly for the last 10 years or so Nintendo has kept the gameboy in a constant state of "replacement" with multiple types available at any given time... hence the confusion JBO mentioned when things like the advance and the SP came out. But in my eyes the micro is the same as the SP... no tech advance other than making it smaller. Is Nintendo phasing out the SP? I think not, they just "upgraded" it. And from the confusion of my worker I can see a few parents facing the same problem with their kids wanting "the same thing" for christmas.

Parents don't know... that is the problem. Nintendo releasing a "new" handheld so soon after the DS made most parents think it was something "different" from the SP. The guy in my office that bought his kid the Micro bought it because he thought it was the new wave in handhelds for kids... his son probably knew better but he was fooled. Kids today are different... they no longer want toys and games like we did, they want tech. Every parent in my office right now has kids between baby and 10 and they all are into tech... even the tiny 6 and 7 year olds. They don't want GI Joes or barbies, they want "intendo" and "playstation".