A 3D Blog for a 3D World

 

 

Disclosure Day feels like Spielberg’s spiritual follow up to his own Close Encounters of the Third Kind, so much so that it feels like a remake: Various “normal” people get access to visions given to them by aliens that make them alienated to others and have to embark on a trip to find the source.  I think Close Encounters is still better because of its unmatched sense of wonder, as Disclosure Day is quite a bit more cynical and had some pacing issues near the beginning. That said, it had a ton of really nice classic cinematic Spielberg alien moments that make the whole ride worthwhile in the end, especially due to its memorable ending.  In fact, I think the only real flaw I can give the movie is that it’s set in the wrong time period (present day). This movie seems to act and behave that it would have been set in the 2000s instead. A real life Disclosure Day happening in the matter shown in the movie would not work at all in real life in the modern day.  Emily Blunt stol...

  I’ve been seeing some defenders of Xbox and Microsoft say that closing down the game studios whose games underperformed is the right thing to do. I think this read of it infantilizes the executives and makes the people getting paid less than a percentage of what they make seem like they have real control. If an executive approves a game about a polar bear wielding samurai swords, then the executives will also make sure that their marketing department will launch proper support to sell the game, and their finance department allocate appropriate budget for the title based on market conditions and the expected timeframe the game will take to develop. The people making sure the polar bear can swing the samurai sword should not, at any point, be worrying about those other aspects. Bad executive decisions tend to fail. Good ones don’t. There is more to being a game executive than micromanaging a game studio, in fact, if they are doing so, then that means they aren’t doing the rest of t...

    If there's a game that made owning a Nintendo Switch 2 worthwhile for me, it was Mario Kart World. I do love the Switch 2, simply because of how much better it makes Switch 1 games, but while I found Donkey Kong Bananza too overwhelming, and Tears of the Kingdom wonderful but still a Switch 1 game running at better settings, it was Mario Kart World that felt like a new experience for a new generation. The mix of the fully realized recreation of the Mushroom Kingdom as if it had North American road infrastructure, the incredibly high skill ceiling, the high production values, all the easter eggs, and the music and visuals, combines to make a game that I'm really into. It doesn't get old, and it's calming and engaging at the same time. Every time I play, there's something new happening. For now, I am waiting patiently for DLC.  Been waiting a long time.  Long, long time.

You know how the Star Trek movies at least tried to make it be more cinematic and do more, crazier, and important things compared to the TV show? This doesn’t. The Mandalorian and Grogu movie was indeed two-three episodes stitched together. I was hoping the critics and those who saw the movie before me were kidding, but no, they were right. There wasn’t even an overarching theme to the story. It was just three stories happening back to back, not even concurrently. But the puppetry and art was cool, they even had stop motion animation. It was indeed lots of cool scenes in the movie. Music was great too. The live action cinematography was really bad though, felt like it was directed by George Lucas with how many bland shot reverse shots there were. Every scene with Sigourney looked awful.  In all, the story didn't have much going on at all. Even bad Star Wars movies like Rise of Skywalker and Attack of the Clones had stuff going on, even if I didn’t like and actively hated ...