One of the key characters in this film is Toby (played by Toby Froud). Froud is a midget who has been given a Muppet head to wear. And although the head is a good special-effects construction, I kept wanting to see real eyes and real expressions. The effects didn’t add anything. —Roger Ebert —Labyrinth (rogerebert.com) Er,…
“It’s important to emphasize story and emotion and character. This is one of the things that games don’t do,” Spielberg said. “Currently, what games do is they give you the entire story in the run-up to the actual game play from level to level. You get to see a movie, and you’re supposed to remember…
The industry and the market are bewitched by the idea of more pixels and polys. Higher visual quality is fair enough, but why is it equated with better stabs at photo-realism? What’s the point of aesthetics at all? If they don’t matter, how come E3 can sucker-smack a “wow” or two out of so many…
Jack: So …. [pause] Jack: So he won then. [pause] Jill: Yes. Jack: Yes. [longer pause] Jack: He waited long enough. Jill: Yes. Jack: Yes … he did. [pause] Jill: Yes, he certainly waited long enough. Jack: Words. [pause] Jill: What? Jack: Words, in conversion, he was good at that. [pause] Jill: Yes … he…
I am also not claiming that IF should self-evidently be assimilated under the umbrella of “games,” but instead is being cruelly excluded. There is plenty of ambivalence about whether or not IF belongs in games on all sides, both from within the IF community and from without. As “fiction” that is experience by playing a…
Settle thy studies (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) I’ve written before about using circle games in my teaching. Since students are wrestling with midterm projects and other major assignments, and since I’m teaching a large number of freshmen in 200-level courses this year, I’m seeing lots of worn-down students. In my Drama as Lit course, up to now…
The ?word daemon?, Leonard ventures, ?however spelled, uncovers a provocative and useful dualism. An intermediary with another world doesn’t have to be beneficient. Yet neither is it compelled to be nefarious. It can be both, flip-flopping between positive and negative states?depending on context or perception, on the vagaries of polities, or the whims of the…
The average American is a ravenous media junkie, consuming up to nine hours a day of television, web time or cellphone minutes, according to new research which raises fresh questions about how technology is revolutionising society. From iPods filling commuters’ ears, the screens scrolling headlines in the elevator at work to proliferating on-the-move tools like…
In “Drama as Literature,” I assigned the first third or so of Oedipus the King, which always throws students for a loop. What’s with the “strophe,” which is the part of the choral performance chanted as the performers dance from right to left, and the “antistrophe,” which is chanted as the performers dance from left…
In these days of instant messaging, e-mail, videophones and nearly instantaneous satellite communication with all parts of the world, the idea of communicating by telegraph is perhaps best described as “quaint.” However, it would be difficult to overestimate the impact that the telegraph had on worldwide communications at the time of its introduction. —The road…
—Keybag (João Sabino) I can hear my wife now… “Where did I put my keys?” Similar:Lego goes steampunkBe still, my nerdy heart. Steampunk —…AestheticsMurder Is Her Hobby: Frances Glessner Lee and The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained DeathSimulations are powerful tools for under…AestheticsEssay on how much a professor learned about teaching from his mentorI had a similar…
Reflection on Wojtyla’s The Jeweller’s Shop (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Last night, I read Karol Wojtyla The Jeweller’s Shop for the first time. I knew it was mostly a collection of monologues with little action, in part because it was written to be performed in secret, in Nazi-Communist-occupied Poland. It is a poetic drama, in which the…
—Wooden Case Mod… and more My jaw dropped and I literally gasped when I saw these images. Are they real? Not a phenomenal CGI project? It doesn’t matter — it’s beautiful! Thanks for the link, Will! By the way, my birthday’s coming up next month… hint, hint! Similar:Why teens are leaving Facebook: It’s ‘meaningless’However, there’s…
She listens to her 12-year-old son and his friends as they discuss the novels that their teachers have told them to read over the summer. The boys don’t like them. They seem, in fact, to hate them. The books that her son, Alex, and his friends are compelled to read are highly regarded by teachers…
The faculty members contend that buildings that have been erected on campus over the last two decades have done a disservice to the Jeffersonian style — Thomas Jefferson founded the university in 1819 and designed the original campus – by attempting to make look-alikes and by paying too little attention to the use of buildings.…
Two or more movies, combined to make one much funnier movie. —Mate a Movie 10 (Worth 1000) Mike Arnzen, you might enjoy “Freaky Friday the 13th,” but keep scrolling until you find the Robin Williams movie. Via Sarcasmo. Similar:Trying to Tame Huck FinnAdventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of…AcademiaRevisiting a Website I Created in 1996: Engineering…
User interface agents are increasingly used in software products; perhaps the best-known user interface agent is the Microsoft Office Assistant (“Clippy the Paperclip”). This thesis explores why many people have a negative response to the Office Assistant, using a combination of theoretical, qualitative, and quantitative studies. Among the findings were that labels–whether internal cognitive labels…
If you’re older than about 38, words and phrases like “frotz,” “xyzzy,” “maze of twisty passages all alike,” and “eaten by a grue” trigger sharp remembrance, like Marcel Proust eating a madeleine. You’ll instantly reminisce about text games like Infocom’s Deadline, Suspended, Infidel, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, and a zillion Scott Adams titles from Adventure…
It‘sprobably true that the easiest eye-catching technology to apply to comics, that some artists are doing, is to use techniques like Flash, and yes, that risks changing the form so much that they?re not comics anymore. —Andrew Stern —Keeping Digital Comics Comics (Grand Text Auto) A good overview of the tension between online comics and other…
—Writing Machines (Flickr) Great photos of old typewriters and old computers. Similar:Franz Joseph and Star Trek’s Blueprint CultureIn 1977, when I was about nine, I saw th…AestheticsSnap's share price sinks, trades just above IPO priceNASDAQ.com throws shade via Reuters: Sn…BusinessAlice in Quantumland: A Charming Illustrated Allegory of Quantum Mechanics by a CERN Physi…Alice in Quantumland: An…