In his article for the New Yorker, The Grammar of Fun: CliffyB and the world of the video game, Tom Bissell presents an extremely well thought out insight into the world of the hipster Cliffster (That's the Gears of war 2 director Cliff Blesinski for the rest of us). It's an exceptional article, you should read it. What was really amazing to me, was the tremendous care and sensibility Bissel extends to the video game genre with his essay, all the while retaining the enthusiasm of most blog site journalist. Hopefully, this kind of writing will continue to appear around the video game sector as video game culture slowly disseminates...

These days the thought of going to the local megaplex can indeed be perplexing. So the other day I decided to bypass the crowds occupying those vacuous movie halls and take an unscheduled trip to my local cinematheque. Here I was met with surly hello and a less-than-enthusiastic "What movie," but this was okay. In fact, it was excellent or at least better than the standard assembly line antics of the big theater queue. I felt a little inspired, as if the ticket man's performance was custom tailored. I proceeded to purchase refreshments,...

First things first: I have not played Braid. I look forward to playing it soon. That being said... On the drive to work today I was station surfing, because there is never anything good on, when I came across an NPR segment written by Heather Chaplin titled "Xbox's 'Braid' A Surprise Hit, For Surprising Reasons." I immediately thought two things: why was a video game getting media attention for anything other than violence and/or record breaking sales? And, damn I want to play Braid. So I listened. It was the usual outside perspective...

If it were casted by Filmonic. Here's the lineup.My contributi...

A while ago, I decided that I wanted my bedroom to serve not only as a living quarter, but as a make shift home theater. In my apartment the ability to condense is a necessity; it's tiny in there(Really. It redefines the term Home Theater in a box.) After the last speaker was mounted, and my DVDs alphabetized, I noticed that my "theater" room still felt a bit empty. It wasn't until a friend of mine, who works at a local movie theater, started collecting what are known in the industry, as one sheets, that I noticed just how bare my...

The format war is over! When Toshiba dropped the failing HD DVD format, nearly all of the platform's exclusive backers followed suite, and quickly abandoned ship(the only holdout being DreamWorks animation.) This final blow ended the nearly two-year long "next-gen" format war between war, between HD DVD and Sony backed Blu-Ray. Now Blu-Ray stands alone with no incentive to drop player prices or improve quality. Just think, what would the high def landscape look like if there had never been a war. Would Blu-Ray have ever had incentive to move past those horrible initial titles and improve image quality? The BD camp is still...