Seven

I was able to zoom in with the sniper rifle with every faction. Are you sure it didn't work? I clicked down on the right analog stick. I'm not positive but I think some factions snipers are able to zoom in 2x while others only 1x. Either way, I have no problem taking people out from long range. It's up close that I have problems... especially against that pesky Count Dooku and his behind the back lightsaber blocks.

It got me thinking about how bad the WWE is really now, and I started thinking that even WCW wasn't this crappy. But the only reason why I might believe that is because it was relatively fresh again back in 96 and everything seemed so spontaneous about Nitro. We'd learn later that the reason why it was so spontaneous was because no one knew what the hell was going on 5 minutes before the show began! WWE sure got lucky with The Rock IMO. The guy had so much charisma that he could carry the lamest angles and still pull it off. And the guy always had something that would crack me up in his interviews. Even Austin and Foley would say something entertaining most of the time. Now we're saddled with HHH and his incessant droning about he's the game and Orton's total lack of mic and wrestling skills. Hell, the guy made me wince every time he wrestled cause it looked like he'd either botch a spot or injure someone. Didn't he break Batista's nose last week? They missed an opportunity with Benoit. If they kept the championship on him for year, it would bring back the legitimacy of the title (how do you legitimize a fake title anways?! ) and bring some of that old school flavor back into the mix where the champion just kicked ass and didn't showboat around the ring spending most of his time gabbing. When are they going to wake up?

Yeah, that's a Oshii trademark. The guy just loves to ramble philosphical on all sorts of topics. In Patlabor II it was about the nature of war and modern Japan's relationship to war, and in GITS it was about the nature of humanity and one's soul or ghost. Sheesh, he even does it in the 2nd Urusei Yatsura movie: Beautiful Dreamer! He injected this sort of philosophical plot about the nature of dreams into a comedy about space aliens for crissakes! He also has to put his basset hound in every movie he makes too. He's got grandiose ideas, but damn, he should just leave the philosophy to the professionals...

I agree with what Noriko said about the new series happening after the Core Galactic Fleet returns to Earth after 197 years and not after Noriko and Kazumi return to Earth 12,000 years later. That leaves plenty of space for whatever other adventures Gainax chooses to throw in between that time span, and still be able to revisit Noriko and Kazumi if they wanted to (not that it is likely). Wouldn't that be pretty crappy though, for Noriko and Kazumi to return to Earth after all that time only to find out that the bugs still managed to be thorn in humanity's side, in the 12,000 years they had been gone, even after their great act of sacrifice?

What's the differences in gameplay between the different factions you can play as? Like for example, the Empire Stormtrooper and Republic Clonetrooper, since they look similar enough?

I'd say that the 2nd Patlabor movie was the beginning of the template for how Oshii's following films would be in terms of mood, character designs (less typical anime-ish), somber music, and CG. The first Patlabor movie was more a collaboration between the members of Headgear, which shows in the more traditional anime character designs and more light hearted story. Patlabor 2 is an excellent movie and so is the first. I'm not sure if I'd rate Wings of Honneamise on the same footing as GITS in regards to animation, but I will say that the story is much more personal. All of these movies, and other more serious anime movies such as that of Satoshi Kon's are where I feel anime as an art form and storytelling device grows, not in the average run of the mill TV series. I don't know many people that enjoy anime that is that serious in theme... most otaku love their girls with big guns and crap. Anyways, Oshii no longer directing anime movies? Why?! It's not like his live action work has really garnered him praise like his animated work has.

Actually, come to think of it, I've seen that chin before! Not to be smartassy, but this Hisashi Hirai guy tends to draw almost all of his characters with one chin... a long narrow pointy one... he's as amazingly unoriginal with character designs as Okawara is with Gundam mecha design. I could find at least 5 different characters from 4 different animes that he designed for that look like Mwu. So it's possible that this guy isn't even remotely related to Mwu but rather a victim of lazy design.

I really thought the miniseries was really well produced. The positives in my mind outweighed the negatives. I really don't like the new Starbuck and feel that she and Apollo have no charisma or charm at all. The new Boomer, meh. I do like the role of the President and Admiral Agama, both are casted really well, and I like how Agama has this edge about him that always feels tense, angry, and desparate. Didn't they say that they wanted the new Captain from Enterprise have a similar kind of personality? If so, then Bakula blew it IMO. The only thing I don't like about the Cylons is why have a sexy woman robot??!! It's such a tired sci fi cliche!! But then again, it does beat seeing an old crusty guy turn around on his throne a million times saying "I expected that... bwhahahaah!" everytime he manages to let the Galactica slip away. Can't wait... it looks like its the only sci fi show I'd ever bother watching since I can't stand the new Star Trek and I think the Stargate shows look hokey.

Ughhhkkk!!! I've been waiting for 10 years for a sequel to Gunbuster and they trot out this FLCL-wannabee anime with a french maid pilot and a reject robeast out of Voltron?!! No wait, I take that back, the Dicks Enuff looks more like a Giant Robo badguy robot that ran off with Jojo's clothes from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure! Man, some things just do not need to be tinkered with.

Hey areaseven, it's been great and all that you've been supplying MW with a weekly recap of WWE stuff, but seeing as how even you've been admitting that it's been really bad as of late, why do you keep taking in the punishment of watching it regularly? I basically gave up a long time ago after the whole WWF vs WCW vs ECW crapfest and then the whole Evolution thing reeks. The Eugene stuff just put me overboard and finally got me to stop watching altogether.

Are you talking about the singer that did Ishtar's songs for Macross II? If so, then I agree that she has a great voice, and in some songs she even sounds way better than Mari Iijima. It's a pity she was attached to such a unpopular production, because the songs were so good they could have done better in any other Macross series. I've been trying to find albums by her and by Chie Kajiura for the longest time.

Why is it that all of the Astray mobile suits are always better looking than the ones in Seed or Seed Destiny?! They should just flip them since Astray is not going to be as up front as the series...

Not to mention, how many times did Leia kiss Luke? Sure, the peck on the cheek in ANH seemed innocent enough, but then you have Leia really planting one on him in ESB. Also, didn't Luke kinda have some sort of infatuation with Leia when he first saw her in ANH? Leia says something to the effect that she somehow had always known he was her brother in ROTJ. Ewwwww, incest!!!

i bitch about the green/blue screen and cg backgrounds in lotr all the time. return of the king has some of the worst skating i've seen in a feature movie of large budget, watch frodos' feet as he sprints into mount doom, it's embarrising. also watch saromons feet when he's preaching to the mountains in fellowship. or in fellowship enters the great hall of moria. while i like lotr, its HIGHLY over ratted. especially cg effects wise. their real world props and special effects were really great. but when ever they use compositing and cg, i conisder it pretty much run of the mill. episodes 1 and 2 don't look any better, infact they look worse if you ask me. although i didn' t notice any skating, the factory scene in 2 looked paticularly bad, the cg friggen storm troopers was just down right pathetic, and the cg r2 and 3p0 were atrocitys. for shame! Man, you guys must be watching different movies than me... either that or I don't pay as close attention. When I saw those scenes that you speak of, I didn't notice anything out of order or anyone skating... I didn't notice anything funky with the backgrounds in Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, hell, they cover the whole screen and look ok is all I think when I see CG backgrounds. As for the CG stormtroopers, they were so small in some of the scenes that I would have to break out a magnifying glass to notice details. Saruman's feet were touching the floor... is there something else I should have noticed?? Frodo's feet looked... well, hairy. Are you sure you just aren't nitpicking?

I don't why, but for some reason, I keep thinking I've seen something like that before.... AAAACK!!! NO!!! John Travolta!!!!!!!!

I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. There were some people that were trying to be fair with the movie when others were bashing it after seeing the trailer, but man, not all of that criticism was just fanboy whininess. It's called foresight! Like smelling that big steaming pile of crap before stepping in it and that's not a bad thing, now is it? Oh yeah, and T3 still sucks.

I wouldn't rejoice about this whole Godzilla versus King Kong Versus crap. From the get go it sounded to me like a crappy Freddy versus Jason concept. Both movie franchises were great on their own, all they need is a decent director with a solid vision and respect for the originals. Spielberg - no, Cameron - no, but Ridley Scott went on record saying that he wanted to pitch Alien 5 to the corporate dickheads, but they seemed to wanted to go with the Xtreeemmmeee Fast and the Furious spin on it and go with AVP. So thanks to Paul WS "Geetttt ovveerrrr heeeerrreeee!!!" Anderson, we have a crap PG13 "Friendly for Harry Potter fans" movie and a denial of what could have been from a much more talented and proven director.

Orton is the new Raw champ???!!! WTF!!! I'd watch Raw as infrequent as once every 2 months, but this really is the biggest load of crap yet. I think I'll back down to watching once every 6 months now...

Hell, I can see it now. Ripley returns, waking up in a sleep chamber, being told that she was the sole survivor of the encounter at LV-426, and that she's lost her memory due to her shuttle's crash. Gets briefed by way of showing her her own logs... emphasis on how she hated Ash. Flashback Alien footage of Ash's severed and milk-bleeding head for effect. She's teamed up with more Marines and the obligatory android, and sent again to some other planet with known Xenomorph presence to hunt the buggers down. Ripley voices concern about android. Largely ignored, no surprise. Ripley despondant. Team lands. Motion tracker goes nuts. Obligatory scene with Marines and Ripley battoning hatches and hiding in some basement, with eerie sounds of Aliens pawing around overhead. Poor focus on Alien sillouettes for "suspence". No one actually dies, much to the audience's dissapointment. Some dialogue. Android acts creepy. More dialogue. More tension over android. Great but meandering acting. Audience gets impatient and starts eyeing watches. This goes on for about an hour. Then aliens show up. Hilarity ensues. Marines die. Ripley survives. Final encounter between Ripley and Queen causes her to be cut!-- spewing out... white blood. Surprise. Ripley was an android herself all along. Random, confusing ending. Aaand fade to black. Why was a clone android of Ripley sent with the team? Who knows, who cares. It doesn't matter. The whole movie is just contrived and convoluted setup for a Shamalayan surprise ending. Haw haw. The audience is left wondering WTF, as theater staff sweeps the floor and shoos them out, most of them perturbed and all short 10 bucks. -Al Hey! I actually like that movie concept!! Fox should have hired you instead of that hack Paul WS Anderson! I'd pay money to see that any day rather than see the kiddified train wreck that AVP has turned out to be.

Ahhh Gundam... the Star Trek of the anime world...

"Do you want to hear a spoiler? YOU WILL DIE ALONE!"

Lol, the 80s were never the golden age of cinema, that's for sure. But you can't deny the power of 80s teen sex romp movies! There are bad movies and good movies in every decade sure, but it's the ratio of diamonds to ass nuggets that probably concerns people who believe that there is a decline. There seems to be more and more crap coming out and relatively few masterpieces, but then again they do make a LOT more movies now than in the past. So maybe it's the same all in all, but the sheer amount of movies being produced just makes it seem like there's more crap.

I don't think the poor economy has anything to do with the decline in quality, since the movie industry makes waaaaay more now than in the past. There weren't that many multi-million dollar fantasy/sci-fi trilogies (other than Star Wars) prior to now. Movie megaplexes are opening up everywhere. I'd blame on the modern tastes and the internet for the declining quality, after all back in the day only the professional movie critics had power since they were the only ones who could desseminate their opinions on movies to the mass media. Now with the internet, every tom dick and harry old enough to type can blurt out "dis movie ROXXORZ" and everyone's an amateur critic and it reaches a lot more people now than ever. The other thing is who has more time to go watch movies, teens or working adults? So of course they are going to cater towards their tastes.

What's funny is that I see this forum as being rather "tame" in comparison to most of the forums out there where they discuss movies or whatever. A similar thread in Offtopic.com would've landed a hundred or so replies of words far more critical than "crap". I'm not going to even talk about the critical thrashing it's probably taking at Aint It Cool news...

Blah blah blah blah blah...... FIRST watch the movie THAN you can make allllllll the bad remarks of how horrible the movie was. People have dogged alot of movies such as Terminator 3, and you know what? Terminator 3 got more of a good response from fans than bad. Terminator fans thought it had a nice ending, and would be just about as satasfied as they were with T2....Those who had the bad thoughts of the movie and bashed it, many of them turned the other head and said, "Well, it could have been worse". So before anyone should go bashing about it, watch it first THAN bash...cause I'm not gonna say "DUDE THIS MOVIE IS GONNA KICK ASS!" or "THIS MOVIE IS GONNA BLOW! IT'S JUST LIKE RESSURECTION OR RESIDENT EVIL!" ........so wwhhhhhhhhaaaaaattttttt.......I don't see anyone else directing their favorite movie. Blah blah blah as you say... I thought T3 was a steaming pile with music out of Star Trek Voyager. To each their own. How about YOU go watch the movie first, I'll save my money.