Better Living through Death.

Meant to blog this last week but forgot: FPS games increase brainpower. Experienced players of these games are 30 percent to 50 percent better than nonplayers at taking in everything that happens around them…They identify objects in their peripheral vision, perceiving numerous objects without having to count them, switch attention rapidly and track many items at once. Glad to hear my endless logged hours of Day of Defeat have not gone to waste. And considering I rented Enter the Matrix over the weekend and spent an unhealthy amount of time beating it, I must be operating on a Zen plane right now.

Gollum sings the blues.

Oh what to do? I am sad and blue. If only that I knew, that he would take The Precious! He had better flee, for I am thin and mean, and my eyes have seen, that he did take The Precious! Because the world demanded it (or somebody did, I guess), 2005 will witness the opening of the Lord of the Rings stage musicial in London (flash-heavy official site here.) Oh my, this sounds grisly. Will Troy McClure be in it?

Oompa Loompa Doompadee do.

Tim Burton is tapped for the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory remake. I’m not sure if a remake is really necessary, but, if you’re going to do one, I suppose Burton is the man to helm it. And in other directing news, Darren “Requiem for a Dream” Aronofsky wil be helming Lone Wolf and Cub. Does this mean Batman: Year One is dead?

Whoa.

Just in case Keanu was getting too much fanboy goodwill in the wake of Reloaded, Neo talks John Constantine. And since I’m getting 100 hits a day from people searching for “Matrix: Reloaded spoilers” (I presume Tank isn’t one of them), here’s a transcript of the Architect scene at the end of the film.

My Blue Heaven.


First-time writer-director Kerry Conran tries to go the Lucas route and digitize full environments in The World of Tomorrow, a forthcoming film described in Player-speak as “Flash Gordon meets Indiana Jones.” I dunno…hopefully Gwyneth and Jude are better blue-screen actors than Samuel L. Jackson and Natalie Portman.