Timewaster's Guide Archive

We're big proponents of casual games and weird variant rules, but every now and then I really have to ask myself why I don't play tournament-level magic.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=sideboard/news/20030226a

http://us.imdb.com/RTO/2003/Oscars/

The Two Towers got a couple of token nominations, but mostly just technical stuff. Andy Serkis got nothing, as many of you predicted, and Peter Jackson didn't get anything except a spit in the eye.

Chicago and The Hours were the big winners, which everyone more or less expected. Catch Me if You Can, one of my favorite movies of the year, only got a couple (though one of them was for soundtrack, which it definitely deserves).

Yes, it's true: http://www.planetgamecube.com/news.cfm?action=item&id=3867

We've already had a preliminary "Babes in Hollywood" discussion, but I now feel obligated to ask who you think should play Samus. No Hollywood director would be so crass as to keep her helmeted throughout the movie--I expect that a) her costume will not include a helmet, or b) she will lose her helmet fairly early on, and certainly c) her armor will be a bit more revealing, and possibly torn in several places.

Saint Ehlers pointed this out to me, and I'm intrigued by the concept. As I understand it, Incarnate is the product of Dragoncon's "Game in a Day," where they invented an RPG in one day, and will eventually be available for free over the Internet. Check it our here: http://www.gregorhutton.com/incarnate/index.html

I saw Die Another Day this week, and I was very impressed--one of the best of the modern Bonds, and better than a lot of the old ones. The villains had some silly attributes but the movie didn't dwell on them (like it did in The World is Not Enough), and it did a good job of combining ridiculous excess (the killer satellite) with real-world factors (North Korea and conflict diamonds). It was nice to see a megalomaniac finally present a workable plan and a plausible motive.

So what are your opinions? Have you seen it? Do you agree? Do you (like myself) think that Brosnan is the best Bond since Connery? What's your favorite Bond movie? Do you feel that Bond movies are inherently flawed because they have to stick to a formula rather than try more interesting approaches (like The Bourne Identity)?

Wow, I'm really impressed. This setting is full, detailed, and very anime-ish. I've already got a bunch of cool ideas for characters, but I'm wondering if Kilowatt has any specific direction for us (like do we need to start in any particular profession of location, or what).

I began counting down to The Two Towers on Monday, much to my wife's chagrin, because it now comes out in less than a month. I thought I'd take a moment here to let you all in on how excited I am.

The true power of Peter Jackson's movies is put into perspective when you go back to the summer of 1999, where you will find me camped out overnight to buy first-day tickets to The Phantom Menace. There were other theaters in my city that had plenty of tickets available, but I camped out because a) I wanted to see it on a huge screen and b) I was a devout fan and acolyte of all things Star Wars. We camped out because, doggone it, we were supposed to. Then we actually saw the movie and pretended to love, all while talking under our breath about the things we didn't like. By the time Attack of the Clones came into view our enthusiasm was dampened--we crossed our fingers and said "I hope it doesn't suck," and then wandered into the theater on the second or even third weekend for two hours of agreeably unphenomenal entertainment. The movies are well made, but we have too much baggage to enjoy them properly; half of our mind watches the movie as it is, while the other half is busy imagining it as we wanted it to be. Oh well, we sighed, no movie could live up to that kind of expectation.

But we were wrong. If any movie could be more anticipated than Star Wars, it would have to be The Lord of the Rings. They are like the polar pillars of modern geek culture--the greatest movies ever made and the greatest books ever written. Lord of the Rings, by merit of its age and academic pretenses, has an even wider fan base than Star Wars. When Fellowship came out we were giddy with anticipation, but The Phantom Menace had taught us not to get our hopes up and we didn't. We braced ourselves for something excitingly shallow and disturbingly distant from our own mental images, but the movie surprised us by being incredible. Disagree with me if you like, but it was an awesome movie and we all loved it. Whereas Star Wars failed to live up to our expectations and left us fairly tepid about the sequel, The Lord of the Rings surpassed my expectations and had me drooling for a sequel before I even left my seat in the theater.

The fact that The Two Towers was my favorite book only heightens the situation--it increases my anticipation while raising the odds that I will be betrayed and disappointed. The Riders of Rohan the Ents are the coolest groups of people in the series, and the moving interaction between Frodo, Sam, and Gollum is one of the most profound subjects Tolkien ever approached. I have learned, however, to trust Peter Jackson as much as if he opened my brain, photocopied my memories, improved on them, and then put them into his movie.

I hope you're all as excited as I am, and if you're not then I hope you didn't read my entire post--it would probably bore anyone who wasn't a raving fanboy. But still, I thought I'd let you know that the countdown has begun. I think I might camp out again, because doggone it, you're just supposed to.