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Movies and TV Reviews

Inception

Inception

Chris Nolan’s masterpiece Inception is much more than just your regular summer blockbuster, full of gunfights (there are plenty), explosions (there are a few), and ground breaking special effects (they abound) – it’s a thought-provoking investigation into the nature of dreams and the subconscious.

The film’s premise is that with the right skills and equipment, people can share each other’s dreams, building dreamscapes and populating them with their subconscious. While this can be put to a variety of uses, the more common one is “extraction” – a form of espionage where the subject’s subconscious is encouraged to put secret knowledge into a secure place like a safe or vault. The extracting team can then break in and steal that knowledge.

Cobb (Leonardo DiCapprio) leads a team of professional dreamthieves on a mission to do the reverse: to plant a thought that will change the subject’s behaviour in a specific way. This is a much harder task as it must be done in such a way that the subject believes it is their own idea, and not something foreign which can be rejected.

Of course, the difficulty is compounded because Cobb brings personal problems to the job. These problems can’t be avoided and will have a very profound effect on Cobb and everybody else in the dreamscape around him.

This is your spoiler warning: I intend to discuss some specifics beyond the jump.

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Movies and TV Reviews Tabletop Games

GOLD: The DVD that does double damage

About this time last year, I started watching a great new web series called Gold. In brief, it is about the trials and tribulations of two national-grade roleplaying teams as they prepare for the international championships of their chosen game, Goblins and Gold.

Once the first season was concluded, a call was put out to help fund a DVD run. Naturally, I wanted to help out a project that had given me plenty of entertainment, and doubly so since I am immersed in the local gaming culture of Sydney.

The Feature

It took a while (inevitable, given that the project didn’t have big studio backing), but I finally got my DVD in the mail. I sat down to watch the whole feature end-to-end and am still blown away by the truth that David Nett and his team have managed to captured. While many of the characters are deliberately written and performed to be larger than life, they draw easily on archetypes of both the gaming culture (speak Elvish much?) and pro sports (seriously, disfunctioning dice rolling hand?).

There’s also a constant reminder that while this is all glitz and glam for the players, the sport is still niche enough to get shut down when the competition for spectators ramps up. What I’m trying to say is that while GOLD is obviously fiction, it still rings true for me.

Special Features

While I haven’t had time to sit down with the commentary tracks yet (there are two of them!), I did watch the cast and crew interview with GirlGamer‘s Cricket Lee. There are some insightful observations and revelations in that interview, and it was warming to see that while a number of people went into the project as gamers, even more began gaming as a result.

Final Verdict

Look, the basic content is still available for free on the GOLD website so you can try before you buy. That being said, I think the DVD is a great thing to have. Purchasing it shows your support for a great project and helps the GOLD team make the case to financial backers that a second season is viable. I highly recommend it. Plus, you’ll also get a behind-the-scenes photo and GOLD collectible game card.

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Books Movies and TV

A Game of Thrones teaser

Those of us who don’t get HBO (eg, Australians) probably missed this recent teaser for the commencement of George Martin’s A Game of Thrones series. It doesn’t give away much, but I definitely heard Sean Bean say, “Winter is coming.” He is going to be awesome as Ned Stark.

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Movies and TV Video Games

Mass Effect on the big screen

Mass Effect

Film School Rejects is pointing to a press release that Legendary Pictures is developing a Mass Effect cinema release. Legendary are the folks behind Dark Knight, 300 and Watchmen, so the franchise would be in good hands.

Obviously it’s still early days — no director has been attached — but I’d be curious to see who could potentially get cast for the film. Would you go with the game’s voice actors, or someone else?

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Movies and TV Video Games

Rock Band 3 might make you bang on the keys

Fresh off my morning feed reading, Giant Bomb is reporting that Rock Band 3 might have keyboard support:

… downloaders of the Green Day: Rock Band demo…received something of a tease after finishing the bite-sized, two-song offering. After hitting “exit,” they were greeted with a big old Rock Band 3 banner that displays pictures of two guitars, a set of drums, microphones … and a keyboard right next to the “3” logo.

If true, this would be both awesome and frightening. One thing that has bothered me while playing many of the classic rock tracks (and I have a lot of them) is that the guitarist is often required to cover the keyboard or organ part. Given that the instruments approach runs and melodies differently, it feels unnatural and sometimes outright difficult, especially when you consider that the RB guitar is really a poor approximation of the instrument.

On the other hand, being a trained pianist, I’m aware of exactly how complex keyboard parts can be. And there’s no way Harmonix can escape using a real keyboard with real black-and-whites. I’m interested to see how notes will be tracked on screen, since I’d definitely prefer a treble clef. Finally, can I bring my own? I’ve been looking for an excuse to buy a new keyboard, and this would definitely be an opportune moment.

Update: Ars reckons it’s a keytar!