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I'd be more excited about the Chocolate Factory film if it wasn't for the fact that Burton's last truly great film was probably Ed Wood, and that was what? Ten or eleven years ago?

I'm actually much more excited about his stop-motion Nightmare Before Christmas follow-up "The Corpse Bride"

It's boring, but I really love water. I drink about three or four pints of the stuff a day. Milk is great also. I truly am the proverbial Captain Spartan.

That Raymondo one *was* pretty hilarious actually. Also because I'm frankly a shockingly nosey person I was poking around in the 'fora' on there a bit and stumbled on the outstanding phrase from THE Patrick Alexander:

"HE IS AS MOSES, AND MY LEGS THE SEA!!!!!"

That really cracked me up. This Patrick guy seems like quite an interesting person, but you (kinoko) should really tell him that English people only use the word "bird(s)" to refer to women! It just doesn't work with blob guys.

As for the others, I'll try them out! But do you guys think you could add little introductions or explanations for why you think they're great? It makes it easier for people to pick out ones they might be interested in, and just generally makes the discussion much more interesting I think. Thanks one and all!

^ I will give your suggestion my consideration!

Also it's good to know that the sometimes-hard-to-put-my-finger-on-what-makes-it-funny brilliance of Dinosaur Comics is not lost on others!

Hey, look what I just found: http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/features/goodcomics.htm. I guess the discussion is over! ...Or is it?

These really are the worst things ever, aren't they? Discuss.

Nah, that's not really what I'm asking, but before I get to the point let me self-indulgently recount my sad, sad tale.

The idea that webcomics could actually be any good at all only occurred to me whenÃ, someone here pointed out Kid Radd, which I swiftly took to my heart. After that I stumbled on Dinosaur Comics, which I also thought was just wonderful and right up my alley in most respects. From there I found Pokey The Penguin and The Perry Bible Fellowship, neither of which blew my mind or anything, but were both easily funny and inventive enough to reaffirm my faith that webcomics were 'actually pretty cool'.

Shortly afterwards I realised that just about every other webcomic on the internet is unfunny, idiotic, and clearly written by people so in love with themselves that their every pore is clogged with the pure essence of smugness. At that very second of profound realisation I completely lost interest in any webcomics that I didn't already know I liked.

But now I feel like reliving that weird feeling of finding some new comic I like and spending a few obsessive hours working through the entire archive. But I can't seem to find any I don't hate on impulse!

Point starts here: Does anyone know any webcomics that, like the ones above, are good, original and written in a way that suggests the author is someone I wouldn't want to punch? If you have any suggestions I'd also like to hear exactly why you like them, rather then just links. Well expressed opinions are the best things ever, and by golly! they might even trigger a 'discussion' of some sort!

My favourite of 'those' would have to be www.getyourasstomars.com. Oh the silliness!

eveyrone's gotta be hatin' on The Dig, haha. I personally think it's an amazing adventure, and still remains one of my top favorites.

Agreed! I played it again for the first time in years a few months back, and I think it's aged incredibly well. The music and artwork are still just wonderful, and it's great to see Lucasarts streching themselves in a different direction.

As for Full Throttle, yeah it's fantastic. But it *is* too short - just as it feels like it's settling into it's stride it finishes. Even though Schafer wasn't going to be involved I still would've loved to have seen that 'Payback' sequel (the one in the style of the original, not the more recent canned action game) that was intended to explore the game world a bit more.

^ interesting! I will have give them a swift reading.

I seem to remember the Earthworm Jim cartoon actually being geniunely good. I'd like to see them again.

As for these game cartoons... they *are* pretty shocking. Not to be crude, but the section title "The incredible world of dic" does seem quite appropriate.

^ you didn't so much 'wound' my inner child as let it spend an innocence-stealing weekend over at a suspicious uncle's house.

There were some hints that it's going to be a little commercialised at parts, but that's hardly surprising given the budget. I was actually surprised how similar to the old TV series it often looked.

I'm not sure about the Zaphod head thing. I get the feeling they should've just given him one head and left it at that. It's not like that second head ever did a great deal. Actually the movie Zaphod reminds me of Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips, somehow.

I really hope this will be good.

[I]

RAIMIÃ,  Sam Raimi!Ã,  Sweet Jesus, heathen!

Yeah, I always spell 'Raime' wrong, just like I always spell 'favourate' wrong. But it's my problem and I have to live with it every day and goddamnit this relentless peer pressure simply is not helping!! Gah!

I'd love to see both of these films, but if they make an Evil Dead IV (and I still see that as a big 'if'), they'd better set it after Army Of Darkness's 'future' ending instead of the shop ending, or there'll be hell to pay!

But anyway, I wouldn't get too excited just yet. It's best not to take imdb as gospel: they kept up an 'in production' page for Terry Gilliam's Good Omens film for something like two years after the project was cancelled.

As far as I can tell, all Raime has said about Evil Dead IV is that he'd like to do one at some point. I'm pretty sure the 2006 date was made up in the head of some no-good scallywag, because I can't find a direct quote for that date from anyone involved in the production anywhere.

If, as he says, there isn't that large of a fan base... Why remake the first movie and then make a sequel to the original trilogy?

Well you have to admit that an Evil Dead remake has far more commercial potential then an Evil Dead IV/Army Of Darkness II starring a middle-aged Bruce Campbell.

Raime's logic is to make a flashy, heavily marketed Evil Dead film targeted at the younger demographic that watched his Ghost House films (The Grudge and Boogyman), and then later to make a lower budget, lower-key Evil Dead IV targeted at a completely different audience of trilogy fans.

Also, if an Evil Dead IV is made, I very much doubt they'll actually call it "Evil Dead IV". Releasing a direct EDIII sequel with that title so soon after the release of a high-profile film called "The Evil Dead" would likely just confuse and alienate casual viewers, and I doubt they'd want to risk that.

But that's all moot, because I'll only believe an Evil Dead IV will ever exist until after I've watched it. And even then I might not believe it.

ps. The remake won't have Ash in it at all - apparently CAMPBELL HIMSELF!!! asked Raime not to include a character by that name.

If someone finished off the series with an excellent T4, I imagine T3 would look quite a bit better. T3 suffers because the story it tells is generally much less ambitious - it feels to me more like a good transitional episode then a truly satisfying stand alone film, and because of that it's always going to lose out in comparison to the first two.

I don't really get how anyone who loves Terminator 2 could truly hate 3 (aside from the gripes from happy-ending lovers). As far as I can tell, a good number of the complaints leveled at 3 equally apply to 2, and 3 at least has none of 2's cornball sentimentality. I see it as a pretty good film, whereas I see 1 and 2 as pretty great films.

I admit I'm not head-over-heels for any of them, though.

Following the prisoner abuse scandal I was a little disappointed to discover that my excellent "Iraqi Horror Picture Show" remark had already been thought up independently by several hundred other people. Oh well, I guess I should've known better then to dip my toe into the shark-laden waters of the pun industry.

Whoops, for no.6 it turned out I was wasting my time...

Spoiler

trying to decode the wrong set of numbers.

[close]

Number 7 really is harsh, though. It's hard to find the exact info even when you know exactly what you're looking for.

It's pretty goddamn long, but worth it for the excellent word "Dramirony", and the use of The Final Countdown at the end.

Great puzzles, but I think I must be below the required intelligence level because I'm stumped on no. 6.

Pretty good! I admit I generally prefer the original arrangements, but it's great to be able to hear that fantastic 'Linc Matrix' tune without loading up the game. 'As cool as you' sounds very nice here, as well.

Obvious observation, but the real problem with videogame movies is that they're not videogame movies at all - they're generally just your average garden-snail genre flicks, only with a scenario and (if you're lucky) characters loosely inspired by a videogame. And they always insist on polluting the purity of the game concept with typical Hollywood conventions like having rounded characters and romantic subplots. No need!

I remember the old teletext daily games/comedy magazine 'Digitizer' once had an "exclusive extract of the Tomb Raider movie script", and the whole thing just read like:

---
LARA CROFT misjudges her jump and bumps into a WALL.

Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  LARA CROFT: Uh.

She approaches a KEYHOLE, but realises she doesn't have the appropriate KEY.

Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  LARA CROFT: No.
---

...and so on. They were joking, but that's what game movies should be like! Next-to-no dialogue, just literal, live-action recreations of the games.

Just think - A live-action Mario film that flawlessly recreates the level design from '3' or Mario World. A Doom game that's just some faceless guy shooting up monsters for 70 or 80 minutes. It'd be the best film genre ever, I say!

The thing is, as games get more and more sophisticated and realistic, the less and less interesting the idea of a movie conversion gets. Seeing live-action conversions of blocky old 2D games is quite an intriguing idea, but when the games are cinematic and realistic to start with, who really needs a film?

I admit I’d kill for a Schafer-directed stop-motion Grim Fandango spin-off movie, though.