Life of Smiley

The recent controversy over the Hot Coffee mod of Take2 Interactive's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas video game -- a hacker-created modification unlocks a hidden mini-game involving graphic sexual intercourse -- is completely missing the point. I'll get to that, but first let me address the points that others have been debating. The first point is the obvious one: is this sort of thing appropriate for a video game? From what I've seen , the content is certainly graphic and I can understand how it might be shocking to people who are not used to seeing such acts depicted in visual media. A movie containing such a scene would no doubt earn an R rating, restricting access to moviegoers age 17 and over. By this measure it seems appropriate that GTA:SA was originally rated M by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), restricting purchase to gamers age 17 and over. Furthermore, the offending content is not even accessible without applying the aforementioned software p...

In response to this post , I don't see how the Grokster decision can be considered a "stupendous strategic loss" when it is in fact irrelevant. As the author points out, the P2P cat is out of the bag. There will always be technologies such as BitTorrent which are freely available as open source with no companies to sue. Bottom line: give people a reasonably priced, convenient, legal option (e.g. iTunes) and they will use it. As a side note, did anyone ever use Grokster? I didn't. The music industry's reaction to file sharing reminds me a bit of the US' reaction to 9/11. The (il)logic seems to be, if you can't reach the real culprit, at least go after somebody.

This post is in response to the question of what is the best comic book movie ever? Or more to the point, is Batman Begins the best of all time? Batman Begins is a good movie and I would recommend anyone to go see it. But frankly I have no desire to see it again. When you get right down to it, that's the only measure of greatness that matters. I agree with everyone that the backstory is great. In fact, it may have been too good. I really enjoyed the early scenes in Japan (?), and when we got back to Gotham I just felt like things went downhill. I had a couple of specific, though minor, complaints. I didn't like how Bale's face looked squeezed into the bat mask, or how he did the cheesily gruff bat voice. And, as most reviewers have noted, Katie's performance was weak. But in general, the story, set/SFX, direction, and acting were all spot-on. And yet, I couldn't help feeling that the whole was less than the sum of its parts. As the movie went on, my interest wane...