noizu

God, the animation is just fantastic, so full of character. That little handclap he does....

Enough of the teasers though, I just want to see the damn film

I love David Bowie's floaty-crash into the table. Makes me laugh no matter how many times I see it.

Plus the way he says "Oh no! Did you?" - the tone of his voice... amazing.

Crystal Castles - Good Time... the kind of insidious catchy videogame bleepage that I've no defence against whatsoever

I just picked this up again after months of leaving it alone - Mario Galaxy and other stuff kept getting in the way - and have gotten completely sucked in now. Maybe it's cause I've come to it straight after No More Heroes but the environment design is really jumping out at me, especially Skytown and the Homeworld - I think Homeworld's black-and-red palette really works, a lot more than the purple alternate-world in Echoes. Plus it helps that i've gotten the naff space-marine stuff from the start of the game well out of the way and can happily wander the corridors of

the Valhalla (is that spoilery?)

alone with the sinister music.

Love the incidental touches, black acid-rain spots on the visor and the like.

I think going to see a good creepy horror in a packed cinema is my favourite kind of cinema experience - it's the reactions of the crowd as the tensions ratchet up that really add to the atmosphere. There were so many whimpers and yelps during the knocking game scene when I saw this last night, and then the little cathartic bursts of laughter after big scares... fantastic. Haven't seen an audience so well played by a film since The Others! Glad that the Orphanage didn't feel too familiar after it settled into its own groove - yeah it uses all the old creaky-house scary-child tricks but it all leads up to a really satisfying ending. Bleak, though. Yikes.

Some stunningly bad parenting in there as well!

Making your disfigured kid wear a freaky scarecrow mask to make him less scary to other kids?? Welcoming the mentally handicapped to your children's home by dressing everyone up in equally horrible Wicker-man animal faces? Brilliant!

'Lorries' - Colin Newman.

It's about lorries!

The poster for Audition had the girl holding a big syringe looking massively sinister, so yeah the only way you might think it was a genuine romantic drama was if you'd been lured to the cinema under false pretences. Which i did consider doing when it was showing... I can only imagine what a headfuck it would be to sit in a cinema blissfully unaware of what was coming

Psycho must suffer the worst from this though. Watching it now, it's really hard to imagine sitting in a cinema having never heard THAT music, or not anticipating what's going to happen to Janet Leigh. So many weird things that film does, which have pretty much lost their impact now. Still great though, and because it's so famous for just one scene it's kind of surprising on first viewing how much actually happens before the big murder.

Oooo nice!

And diagonal!

Weird seeing these designs in the flesh like that... Nite Owl's ship in the background looks great though

It must be a weird film for women to watch though - there are barely any women in it, and the few who are get treated exactly how you'd expect from those times (doesn't someone shout "Sit that woman DOWN, sir!" during one of the meetings early on). So it must be hard for women to relate to, though it's impressive to see a film set in the past that doesn't have an anachronistic feisty 'I'm not gonna wear a damn corset' character to win over the female audience.

Saw it last night and it really is the kind of film that worms into your head afterwards. I'm unsure about the ending like a lot of people seemed to be, but the niggles with the film just make me want to see it again really. A few things about it made me feel like i was watching a Kubrick film more than an Anderson one, the jarring final scene especially. I'd imagine there are tons of details and connections that you find the more you watch it.

Would love to see that on VC - it used the memory card for saves though, so if that's awkward to change, like with the ghost-race saves on Mario Kart, they might not bother....

Be a shame though. Best musical villains in anything ever.

My favourite scene was from near the end as well.

Moss

Lookin for what's comin.

Woman

Yeah but no one ever sees that.

Saw this last night and absolutely thought the same as Headache there - that little exchange stuck in my head for the rest of the film. Great stuff, I can see why if you went in expecting something like Fargo or Lebowski you'd feel short-changed but it really had the feel of Blood Simple - all that tension and mood and decisions coming back to bite you on the ass.

Never liked Tommy Lee Jones (or at least the character he tends to play) but he was fantastic in this. His little speech

about his dream at the end was a really nice end to the whole thing I thought. And god you really do fear for him at the motel scene

Such a quiet film too - loved the way in a couple of scenes music starts to fade in and then just comes to nothing, like it kept threatening to have a score but never quite got around to it

A pair of post-punk belters -

Siouxsie & the Banshees

(I'm guessing enough people already know Hong Kong Garden and Spellbound)

Fireworks - Twice Upon A Time

Carcass - The Scream

Jigsaw Feeling - The Scream

Happy House - Kaleidoscope

Coal Mind - Downside Up (B-sides)

Cocoon - A Kiss In The Dreamhouse

Into The Light - Juju

Monitor - Juju

Peek-A-Boo - Peepshow

Sea Of Light - Downside Up (B-sides)

Magazine

Philadelphia - The Correct Use Of Soap

Shot By Both Sides - Real Life

Definitive Gaze - Real Life

Talk To The Body - Secondhand Daylight

Permafrost - Secondhand Daylight

Stuck - The Correct Use Of Soap

Sweetheart Contract - The Correct Use Of Soap

The Honeymoon Killers - Magic, Murder & The Weather

About The Weather - Magic, Murder & The Weather

Rhythm of Cruelty - Secondhand Daylight

I hated that they made Link a righty for Twilight Princess. Boo!

Always use the Wii Remote with my left hand, which makes for a weird disconnect with Metroid Prime 3... the Grapple Beam shooting out of the opposite hand to the one you're shaking with, and firing from the other side as well.

I do like that the two separate parts of the Wii controller allows for it to be used however you like though, just wish they'd have more options for left-handed feedback to sort out things like the Metroid setup - I know Samus's gun arm has always been on the right but damn it, if they can change Link's traditional handedness...

Tricky, this.... Boards of Canada

Turquoise Hexagon Sun - Music Has The Right To Children

Skyliner - Trans-Canada Highway EP

Chromakey Dreamcoat - The Campfire Headphase

Music Is Math - Geogaddi

Kid For Today - A Beautiful Place In The Country EP

Aquarius - Music Has The Right To Children

Dayvan Cowboy - The Campfire Headphase

Everything You Do Is A Balloon - Hi Scores

The Beach At Redpoint - Geogaddi

Open The Light - Music Has The Right To Children

I really enjoyed The Mix when it came out (it was the first Kraftwerk record I bought), but it's quite poorly regarded now.

Yeah some of The Mix sounds horrible and cheesy now, especially the dance beat welded onto Radioactivity....

always liked its versions of Autobahn and Trans-Euro Express though. Plus they're shorter than the originals so it saves anyone new to the stuff listening to 20 minutes of Autobahn first go!

here's a stab at KRAFTWERK

Komettenmelodie II - Autobahn

Radioactivity - Radioactivity

Autobahn - The Mix

Trans Europe Express - The Mix

The Man Machine - The Man Machine

Home Computer - the Mix

Tour de France - single

Neon Lights - The Man Machine

Vitamin - Tour de France Soundtracks

Franz Schubert - Trans Europe Express

(everyone knows The Model already...)

WIRE

French Film Blurred - Chairs Missing

The 15th - 154

Reuters - Pink Flag

Sand In My Joints - Chairs Missing

Advantage In Height - The Ideal Copy

Lowdown - Pink Flag

Come Back In Two Halves - A Bell Is A Cup, Until It Is Struck

Ahead - The Ideal Copy

No Warning Given - Read & Burn 3

On Returning - 154

MM is the best Zelda I've ever played. Bar none. It is like a classic literary novel. Can be interpreted in some really interesting ways. Please nintendo, make a next-gen version of that, just as creepy, with a perhaps slightly longer day cycle.

To be honest, I can't imagine another Zelda being made with the same tone as MM again - I think that appearing so soon after Ocarina, it was seen a kind of afterthought, which meant that it could veer off in weird new directions without the pressure the 'main' Zeldas have of keeping it accessible to new players and being big system sellers. It definitely has the feel of 'the first one's been a big success, let's fuck with the formula, mess with people's heads and see what happens!' that you sometimes see with the better sequels (bit like Empire to Star Wars, or Batman Returns to Tim Burton's Batman). I love MM's warped Alice In Wonderland feel to pieces, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a one-off.

Makes it all the more special, of course....

Aww, he really is a mashup of R2-D2 and Johnny 5 isn't he? Looks absolutely lovely, you really get the impression the film's going to be a remorseless heartstring-tugger.

Hoping for some top fantasy-robot design in this to wipe out the stain of that CGI 'Robots' blandfest from a few years ago

Pink Flag's 30 years old this year! That's scary. But yeah, I'd always go with Chairs Missing as their best too...

They had a new EP out a few weeks ago, there's a track called No Warning Given which I'd rank among the best they've ever done.

Wire

It's not really called 'Afternoon of Darkness' is it?? That's brilliant.

The two words don't sit together at all, it's like 'Teatime of Devastation' or something. Putting 'Afternoon' in your title just makes it seem a bit wishy-washy doesn't it?

Always loved Metal Mario from 64. At the time the metallic sheen looked fantastic, the daft hi-NRG cheesy dance version of the powerup music still makes me smile when I think about it, and I loved the look of the little underground cavern place where you first get it. Always thought it was one of the most Mario World-styled areas of Mario 64.

Worst - FLUDD, just for its voice. Didn't mind the mechanics of it, but god every time it spoke my nerves went haywire.

Haven't queued for a game in aaaages but did last night for Galaxy. God was it worth it!

I absolutely love, love the abstractness of it - proper videogame surreal stuff, like everyone's been saying it's impossible to play without grinning or laughing. Such brilliant use of 3D space as well, the whole 'down is up' thing is only (so far) disorientating in a good way, and it's the kind of thing that could've been a nightmare to navigate if it wasn't so well designed.

Was a bit wary when i heard about the orchestrated score, i dunno, it thought it wouldn't feel gamey enough for a Mario game - don't know why i was worried, soon as i heard the lovely lullaby tune early on I was sold. By the time I got to the

first junk level with the gorgeous piano tune, being pulled from star to star through space

I genuinely was in raptures. Tears in my eyes! Is that wrong??

Hmm!

Majora's Mask (although it could just as easily be Ocarina, but MM just pips it i think)

Bangai-O!

Mega Man 2

Rez

Mario 64

Earthbound

Metroid Prime

Jet Set Radio

Castlevania IV

Super Mario Kart... especially the brilliant, shrill, mental-sounding Rainbow Road

If Galaxy lives up to its predecessors' standards I'll be annoying a lot of people with my humming over the next few weeks

The Ghost House was absolutely fantastic - the music, and the way the closer you get to the carousel you can hear the music from that mixing in with the main theme; the psycho piano; the huge moon outside; the squawk the eye things made when you ran around to make them dizzy; the box thing that threw you up in the air when you grabbed it...

Haven't played it in ages, and it's easily one of my favourite games, and have meant to get it on the VC. I'm kind of enjoying putting it off though, knowing it's there to play through again sometime when I'm idle games-wise...