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Shut up!

they use cartoons for pornography and poop on each other alot.

HOW CAN YOU ARGUE WITH THAT!!!!

So his badge isn't switching sides? And his rear-facing idle animation isn't him farting?

A heartfelt "Aye!" to that, auriond.

I just got done reading about the Nevada-tan murder, where an eleven year old girl who was a big fan of Battle Royale slit the throat of a twelve-year old girl in her class with a boxcutter. Now, I must say, she did not do this from watching BR. Just like everyone else, her guilt is her own, and the trouble and mental anguish which caused such a horrible event must have been pre-existant.  BR shows that death and killing, even for survival, is a terrible thing with very real consequences. To quote the boy who just killed his friend (who had been driven to insanity by the fact that he was a fat, unpopular kid who would no doubt be killed off first) with a crossbow bolt to the heart: "Oh, my god! It's real! It's really for real!"

I see Asian cinema as just that: cinema. What comes out of America is a crapfest. With movies like 300, Pan's Labyrinth, etc. coming out, you wonder exactly how production companies actually came to the conclusion to make them, since American audiences would rather watch steaming piles of fecal matter like Scream and Hostel. I enjoyed the first Saw because of certain psychological elements, but most of it and it's two sequels were fetid loads of filth, just like everything their producers and those of their ilk are allowing to be made nowadays.

I'll always stand by my argument, regardless of what assholes like Jack Thompson and Billy Graham and James Dobson are saying, that Hollywood isn't trying to put ideas into the heads of our youth: our youth have the ideas already in their heads, and we feed it because it's the fashionable and moneymaking thing to do.

Japanese cinema, on the other hand... people freak out because they use cartoons for pornography and poop on each other alot. My sister refuses to allow anything from Japan to cross the screen in her house because she's sure somewhere some girl is going to be getting raped by tentacles. But we're the sick ones, in this bloody, rotten place. The Japanese might make movies we construe as being sick, but if you compare Battle Royale to any of the movies of similar genre that are out in America now, you will see that it's us who are sick. The underlying theme of all our horror movies is blood, guts, and death. The underlying message of Battle Royale is that even in the face of the worst imaginable terror there is a way of escape... there is hope. As I said earlier, the theme isn't horror. It's a sad commentary about despair, and what it can do to people... and why it doesn't need to be, and how things can change so it doesn't need to be.

They portray, as auriond said, their on-screen anguish and sorrow in the form of terrible images of torture and pain... what do you expect? Fifty years or so ago we wiped out a considerable portion of their innocent population because of the mistakes of their government. The memory of a huge number of people being simultaneously wiped from existence in a cloud of radioactive horror is as good a reason as any to portray extreme situations of horror in your cinema, and has been a fundamental part OF their cinema ever since Gojira rose out of the ocean.

I kiss you. 

Well, now I'm a bit eager to get my hands on them. Does anyone have any idea where I can obtain any Battle Royale-related goods? It seems as though my copy of the movie was, indeed, bootlegged, put in a printed DVD with a printed case and sold as a used movie to Hasting's. The quality looks like it was originally intended to be 320 x 240 blown up to full-screen size, and the subtitles are burned on so I wasn't able to read everything clearly. And I would most definitely love to obtain the manga and the novel (I found the first ten chapters of the original novel translated here in case anyone's interested, but after enjoying a taste I decided I would wait until I could obtain the whole thing. This only takes them up to the scene where Shuya is bandaging Noriko's arm). I can't find them anywhere. Hasting's also had issue 7 of the manga, used and in bad condition, for five bucks, but I didn't want to torment myself with that, either.

I can understand how it might be perceived as a bit silly. Especially the briefing video (the one time I laughed before I could barely hold my head up anymore), and the part at the end with the teacher's death scene (it was poorly executed, but still managed to be a bit creepy and, although he was an asshole, made me feel sorry even for him).... It IS supposed to poke fun at society. But it does it in the most terrible way imaginable. I can't even begin to express how i felt for each and every one of the students. The only character in the entire film I cared nothing about was Kiriyama, the insane one. Every single character had their own depth and complexity. I thought at first that Mitsuko, the girl who was running around killing everyone, was a totally one-dimensional character, but then, her dying words (I just didn't want to be a loser anymore) and I understood the entirety of her character. I felt bad for someone who had up till then been a homicidal maniac.

There were two scenes in the film that I found especially terrifying. First, the very introduction. When I watched the movie the second time, having realized exactly what that little girl with the bloodstained ragdoll had just undergone for 2 days, 7 hours, and 43 minutes... (shudder)   I wondered what she had done to win, and how it had effected / scarred her.

The second scene that is so terrifically horrible that I can't remember the scene without a tremble in my hand was the Lighthouse Massacre. It was a little over-stylized, but it was terrifying how one moment the girls are happily eating spaghetti and the next moment become so paranoid of everyone and everything around them that they brutally murder each other.

You don't have an inventory yet. Just talk to her again.

I'm sorry to post this, but in a way, I'm not. I know that if every n00b with a modem started posting threads about their favorite movie, this would eventually become a rather lousy place to be.

That having been said, I just watched a movie that shattered me. Shattered me, for God's sake. I tremble to remember it. I'm an avid horror fan, and have watched, unflinching, THE most terrifying horror films of all time. I normally forsake the slasher movies and go with the more cerebral, deep movies that are designed to leave you with dread long after you turn off the TV. But just last night I found a movie in a dollar rack at Hasting's that I've been meaning to get for a while. I brought it home, put it in... and it ruined me. It was almost two hours long, but as soon as I finished it, I did something I've never, EVER done before... I watched it a second time through immediately. When I did, the opening scene suddenly made terrible sense to me, and it crushed me. I've seen movies about horror, but this isn't a horror movie... it's a movie about despair, and it shook me to the very fabric of my being. I've found myself getting misty-eyed at odd cinematic moments, like when Data found his cat in the wreckage of the Enterprise at the end of Generations... But I can seriously say as a non-emo adult who's very secure in his masculinity that I wept continuously throughout the entire film, both times, and today, when I tried to watch it again but found that I couldn't bring myself to. In fact, I'm having a hard time typing this as I remember it now.

I feel strange saying these things about a simple movie. Especially one that I would normally eschew ("It can't have a good, meaningful storyline! It's just a violent teen flick! What is this, some kind of cheap Red Dawn ripoff??")... But there was no way I could resist posting this about a movie that touched me so profoundly. So...

Has anyone else seen Battle Royale?

That's precisely what I meant about the shoulder blades. It looks like you've got a deformed humpback dragon on your hands. Just make, like, a little ass between the wings.

And I'm not terribly sure what you changed about the wings. I didn't mean the texture should be more leathery there, I meant... Well, here, this is what I meant:



A creature with solid wings like that would have a terrifically hard time getting off the ground, I imagine. Just like a bird or a bat has long "arms" that reach out from it's shoulders and have a different material coming out of it (feathers make up a bird's wings, and a membranous skin makes up the  wing of a bat) so too would a dragon have wings like those pictured above.

I'm not sure... there's a million different ways that people perceive dragons... but I might change the texture on the wings to a thin, bat-like leathery material, with the green dragonscale texture just running across the edge of the wing. I don't find any fault with the scale texture. Also, in addition to what these others said, the tail is way too short. He looks more like a happy puppy instead of a dragon. I always envision a dragon's tail, especially a flying dragon (as the tail would have to act as a rudder, and therefore would need to be this long in order to compensate for it's weight and overall length) as long as the dragon or 1.5 times as long. And yes, eyes would be key to making him more menacing.

And he needs shoulder blades... good sharp ones, maybe even with little spikes coming out. Right now he looks like a humpback.

My computer has no sound.

Do you have your speakers turned on? Are they plugged in? Does your computer have a sound card?

How... dare... you. How friggin' dare you. You post a thread asking for help, and when everyone jumps on board to give you a bloody hand you spit it back in their face. You don't even say "Oh, that didn't work, is there anything you can suggest?"

I am not downloading that!

Why not, you'd be able to play the game then.

Take a computer class.

...Said to someone who could probably teach a computer class.

Norton is not the problem, nor is it to blame

Ummm, yes it bloody well is. Norton is a shit adware program that boggers your computer right the hell on up. I doubt it even really is finding any viruses, it just wants you to send them your piggy bank for a version that still won't do anything.

I said I DON'T WANT THE TALKIE FILE!

Spoken like a true temper-tantruming infant. You remind me of a kid in the store whose mum has just bought him a new toy and is whining "But mommy, I want THAT ONE!!!"

No, that wasn't the website.

How about, "Oh, that one didn't seem to work. Is there another?"

Would you guys believe that this little cretin found one of my posts from... I don't even know when it was, probably a couple of weeks ago... that said I liked "Ringu" and decided to shoot me a nasty PM to tell me it was a crap movie for no apparent reason? I'm sure you would, given his track record.

Grow up, and don't bother coming back here until you do.

When used to the proper effect, bloom is gorgeous, otherwise, yeah, it's a bit like lens flare (which, to everyone's chagrin, I still enjoy using from time to time). It depends on the effect you want to get. I have no idea why bloom shading would be used in a game like, oh, I don't know... Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six... But in a game in that same genre, such as FEAR, which incorporates an otherworldliness, it can be used to create a terrible, washed-out feeling like you're not altogether sure if you're in this world or the next. In a game like, for example, Dungeon Siege, which is just a total hack-and-slash dungeon crawl, it would seem just a bit goofy, but in another game also in the fantasy genre, Fable, it was used to beautiful end effect, creating a fantastic fairy-tale feeling that still just about mists over my eyes every time I play it. Going into Dungeon Siege, you just want to kill things. Going into Fable, you want to be transported into a different world where things are just a bit... off.

http://filmmaking.stormforcepictures.com/

Partway down the page, you'll find a how-to section that tells you how to make a camera dolly and a steadicam setup. I can't vouch for the dolly, but I've built the steadicam for my own stuff and it's fairly easy and inexpensive.

Now, remember me when you become famous!!!

They contacted me, they are distributing it completely free of charge to me, and the contract is nearly exactly that which I had for the Esper RPG, which my literary agent assured me was kosher. I've looked into them, and although they're fairly small (with only three published games at present) they're reputable and have even been interviewed on IGN. It's all good, and it won't be terribly expensive (which was the problem with my last two books... I went with a total crap publisher and they charged 20 dollars for a 120-page book  ).

It's still mine to give out for free, and so if anyone feels they can't afford it, please let me know and I'll email you all a copy, since almost all of you had something to do with its creation (if for nothing else, inspiration). But I hope you might decide to support a starving artist

EDIT: Haha! A pretty girl posted in my thread!!

Is that directed at JDinky? I was kinda wondering why there's an 80's samurai, unless it's from one of those crazy 80's movies where Americans made believe they were Japanese.

And Sempai: best... story... ever. The Dark Knight Returns is better than any novel and a more beautiful work of art than anything hanging in the Louvre.

Acting is based on state of dress, or lack thereof?

Damn. I've been wondering the secret.

Ashen's right. I really like (no one criticize, I know no one else liked it) the Exorcism of Emily Rose (you know, minus all the Catholic crap) but it wasn't until I looked him up on IMDB that I remembered who he was. I just saw the Patriot for the third time yesterday, and I had no idea he was Cornwallis. As much as I hate the Hollywood reproductions of my favorite superhero, I own all of them and have seen Batman Begins on numerous occasions. I had no idea he was Carmine Falcone. I'm not much for comedy movies, but I like Jackie Chan, and so Rush Hour is one of the very few comedy movies I like... And he played Juntao. He's a great actor, but he's too... unmemorable? Is that a word? He's even been in some defining roles, such as the priest in Emily Rose could have been, had that movie been a little more popular... It's just something about him. I could watch all his movies back to back and have no idea he was the same guy. That's either a testament to his skill as an actor or proof positive of some strange paranormal phenomena.

Oh, BTW, Buckethead: idol worship's not worth it. Go make something of yourself and put Tom Wilkinson to shame.

Bump.

I normally don't bump my threads, but it has been quite a while and I have a new announcement to make: an internet gaming company has shown interest in publishing Alpha - X! I just signed and sent out the contract this morning. They're not going to pull an Al Emmo and try to get as much as a new XBox game for it... Their other games sell for around 8 dollars each. I think that's like 4 pounds.

I really hope people don't look at this negatively. For me, it isn't grasping at dollar signs and trying to use the game to make money... I am honestly hoping that this is going to result in a broader spectrum of people hearing about me and my game, and, by proxy, my writing, so I can have a little jumpstart in my writing career. 

However Klytos, the post before this one can be considered spam.

...And proud of it...

Even if it were just lgm, it's still an AGSer making something of himself and sharing it with us, and asking us to help him out. I see no difference between this and, for example, Dave Gilbert's post about Wadjet Eye Games' recent nomination, or Kandyman's post about his MySpace. Or my upcoming post about how a small online game production company wants to sell Alpha-X.

lgm, remember me when you make it big time. My dream was always to work in films, but my family sent me to a friggin' seminary instead