I largely agree with you on the Craig era Bonds. Quantum of Solace is Boring: The Movie. However, I like Casino Royale a fair amount because it was so refreshing after the Brosnan era ending with something of a wet spurt. It really depends on what you want from a Bond movie.

Goldfinger is the best Sean Connery movie.

It isn't the best James Bond movie. James Bond is a very damaged man. (Basically, imagine Sterling Archer only it's not a joke and he's actually like that.)

Rbx5 said:

http://thecartdriver.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/iIrw2JgoAX24G.jpg

Spring anime lineup. Some good shit comin' down the pipe if this is any indication, especially the new Shinichiro Watanabe/Yoko Kanno show.

First time that I know/like some of the anime on this list. Usually is very esoteric stuff that only DG's into.

Archer is good because they're willing to Go There. So many other shows would pull back at the last second and be all "ha ha, we aren't REALLY gonna make our characters I to absolute bastards". Plus which F/X lets them swear on TV.

Perfect Dark is so much better than Goldeneye, especially the XBL version which fixes all the framerate issues. Looooove that game. Warning: Perfect Dark Zero is NOT awesome like Perfect Dark.

I'm curious about Train Hero because notorious deadbeat Pat Lee is working on it.

So I started reading the manga Oyasumi Punpun/Goodnight Punpun last night, and it's the greatest fucking comic I have ever read. Cannot recommend it highly enough, and Vertical needs to pick this shit up post-haste, as I'm fairly certain they're the only ones who'd touch it.

Rbx5 said:

I still haven't seen License, but good to know I'm not the only one who regards Timothy Dalton as the most underappreciated Bond (it'll be tough to put one over on The Living Daylights though, which also happens to have the best Bond theme). Also Goldeneye is the best Bond movie.

If you talking about best Bond songs, I'd have to put my vote in for "Goldfinger", "The Man with the Golden Gun", "A View to a Kill", "For Your Eyes Only" and yea... Living Daylights. I liked the blonde in that movie, which she seems to spend her days doing documentaries on past bond girls as DVD extras in like each movie.

Rbx5 said:

@RB: Yes, but we generally try to ignore that fact. Also apparently Archer is amazing and I'm only just coming to realize this now, thinking it was just going to be another shitty animated cable show. Gotta check it out at some point.

And Goldeneye for the N64 was good for its day, but calling it "bare bones" by today's standards is an understatement. I kinda miss the Bond games, though; they were always good, solid fun with multiplayer that built on the Goldeneye model with each game. Personally, I consider Everything Or Nothing to be the unofficial last Brosnan Bond film; if they could give a Bond game of today the kind of full-court press they gave EOE, with today's technology, they could come up with something pretty great.

Ive come to enjoy Archer very much, since it feels more like Sealab with Coach McGuirk being a super spy if he wasn't a soccer coach on Home Movies, or maybe its just how Jon Benjiman really wants his life to be.

There was the James Bond game on the Gameboy that I had a lot of fun with which came out a little later after Goldeneye. I am sure it was just a ruse to get more people playing Goldeneye to play handhelds, but I didn't have Goldeneye due to me being in a religious setting at that time growing up. I have the Nintendo Power magazine that told you everything to beat the whole game in like, 4 pages or something.

I had countless hours of fun playing Goldeneye at friends houses and staying up till like 5am just playing the game, we got into some headed arguments.

http://www.mercurynews.com/entertainment/ci_20053588 Sean Young arrested for getting all crunked up at an Oscars party. (The article has to go back to "Stripes" and "Blade Runner" to find a famous role to reference.)

Oh wow. Someone found a way to integrate the new star wars movies with the original star wars movies in a way that compliments both.

The Star Wars Saga: Suggested Viewing Order

I recently discovered my college-aged brother-in-law’s girlfriend had never seen any Star Wars films and wanted to watch them all over winter break. Armed with the new Blu-rays, we all went about watching them, and I showed them in Machete Order. It actually works even better than I originally anticipated – it’s almost as if this is somehow the intented order.
...
The thing she had the most trouble with was when Leia and Luke are talking in ROTJ, and she talks about how she remembers her mother. With a few movies between III and VI, one might forget about this line, but watching VI right after III made her stop and ask “wait, what? How does she remember her mother?” She found herself similarly bothered by R2D2 having a jetpack in the prequels but not the other films, and all I could tell her was “yeah, it bugs me too.” I asked her if she found Jar-Jar annoying and she asked “who?” – Mission accomplished.

I really like that setup!

I think the only big plot hole it creates is "why does Anakin care about Tatooine", and presumably you wouldn't watch the movies like this without someone telling you to do it, so they can just say "Anakin came from Tatooine and his mom is still there and she's a slave".

edit: also it's pretty ballsy to ditch Darth Maul. I kind of understand what he means about the pod race; looking back on it, I think the reason everyone likes it is that it's a quality sequence in a crappy movie, and well into that crappy movie too, and a crappy movie that we waited twenty years to get, so everyone's like "oh thank god it's something that we can enjoy without qualification" and so everyone says "yeah, pod race: really good and worth seeing". But let's be honest: Darth Maul is why we thought the movie would be good at all. We saw Ray Park all made-up and doing twirly-whirly stuff with his double-blade lightsaber, and we were like "oh wow, they are staying true to the things that made the original movies good while introducing fresh new artistic concepts", and then it turned out that no, Darth Maul was only in that one movie.

That said: Sometimes you find that just giving up on one of your Hard And Fast Must Be Done requirements makes everything else work near-perfectly. And, I guess, Darth Maul is that one that we had to give up.

I would still err on the side of "just don't watch the prequels" but I guess if I ever meet anyone who hasn't seen the films and wants to try them out (have you ever met people with pride that they haven't seen Star Wars? What is that?) I'd recommend this.

Man, god damn Darth Maul. I must have been about 12 or 13 when I saw episode I, right at the age where I could actually think about whether I just saw a good movie or a bad movie. I still "liked" the movie, I think I probably saw it 4 or 5 times with friends and relatives that hadn't gotten to it. But I still remember being so incredibly disappointed by Darth Maul. In the previews he seemed to really walk the line between over the top character design and intimidating. He looks like some kind of demonic painting who duct taped two lightsabers together but it still worked! For a 12 year old anyway. Then in the movie he doesn't say anything and twirls a lot before getting cut in half. What the fuck? In my head he was the new (old?) Darth Vader, I thought I could be scared of that guy for three whole movies. Instead I guess that was suppose to be a guy who's name sounded like poop.

How would a 10 year old know that? When I saw that as a kid it was tense as hell.

Yes, that game was amazing.

So why did they become more convoluted and thus the need for the article above?

Gokiburi_Chachacha said:

I still don't understand why people like the podrace sequence. There's no possibility that Anakin will fail. The whole thing is a horrendous waste of time.

Well, that is one of the more "memorable" parts of that whole film, other than the space/lightsaber battles.

850 people with nothing better to do set a record for "human mattress dominoes".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17199434

I guess it's still better than watching NASCAR.

I saw all of the prequel movies in theatres (as well as Episode 1V with my dad when it got rereleased in theatres as the Special Edition, which was my first time seeing Star Wars ever), and I honestly can't remember how I felt about Episode 1. I know I liked the final fight, but everything else I don't think I had strong feelings about.

The prequels spoil Yoda too.

I don't remember much from Attack of the Clones, but I remember really liking the Yoda battle with Dooku. It was good that they didn't spoiler it like they had done the duel sided lightsaber.

Episode 1 was so much more terrible than I could have imagined when I saw it again and that was a film that I've had a neutral opinion on for the past 13 years. Episode 2 was something that I thought was not very good the first and only time I saw it and I can only imagine it's 10X more horrible than I can recall.

What if you watch episode I, IV and V, II and III, and then VI?

Anakin's behavior makes no sense, especially in Episode 3. I've just gone on the assumption that he became a sociopath long before Episode 2.

Lucas seems to be grooming his second daughter to take over the franchise, there may be be hope with her for old edits.

Wrong daughter, the oldest one is the MMA fighter.

I'm a sucker for flourish, so I prefer the prequels.