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Avatar is primed to leave a huge dent in the notions that motion capture films equate to soulless, dead-eyed characters, that sci-fi films must consist of pop music soundtracks and giant, clashing robots to have broad appeal, and that big screen fantasy lands have to be anchored in familiar, Earth-like places to yield heartfelt audience investment.
Roger Ebert on his Sun-Times blog:
“Avatar” creates a new world from scratch, and, as Lucas did in “Star Wars,” fills it with such countless minute details that it doesn’t seem artificial. Well it does, but it’s as real as a fantasy can seem, if you see what I mean. The creatures of this planetary forest are many-toothed and preposterous, but not the grotesque artifices of so many monster movies. Their battles seem sincere and earnest, and not the banging of pots and pans as in “Transformers 2.”
In preparation for the rollout of Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3, Blizzard have been revamping their free Battle.net service. As part of this, and no doubt to decrease their overheads from maintaining separate authentication services, they’re also shifting World of Warcraft over to Battle.net as well. Account migrations have been available for some months already, and Blizzard announced at the recent BlizzCon ‘09 that some time in the near future, migration would be mandatory. According to MMO-Champion, an apparently accidental FAQ update to the European site has indicated that the cutoff date may be in mid-November.
Cue the crazy:
they are transferring your account from Blizzard incorporated in California to Blizzard incorporated in Oregon Such a transfer across state lines CANNOT be required and is a federal crime.
No indication whether this is a deliberate troll or not, but it’s hardly more nonsensical than the allegedly ‘legitimate’ complaints about the migration. The good news is that there is a slim chance these chicken littles might actually follow through on their threats for once, and leave the game.
Update: Blizzard has made it official, and provided a focal point for the madness. Thanks Blizzard. Thizzard.
Update 2: It’s an assault on personal liberty.
The BBC have unveiled the new logo for the forthcoming Steven Moffat-led, Matt Smith and Karen Gillan’s legs-starring 2010 series of Doctor Who. Quick opinion: I think the type they’ve used looks nice. I think arranging it so it looks like the TARDIS is tacky, but not nearly as tacky as the lens flares. Nothing says “I just got a copy of Photoshop!” quite like lens flares.
Yes: the Referendum gets unattractively self-righteous and judgmental. Quite a lot of what passes itself off as a dialogue about our society consists of people trying to justify their own choices as the only right or natural ones by denouncing others’ as selfish or pathological or wrong. So it’s easy to overlook that hidden beneath all this smug certainty is a poignant insecurity, and thenaked 3 A.M. terror of regret.
Now I’m not saying that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990, but I have not yet been shown any good evidence that he didn’t! There also seems to be a concerted effort to silence those brave enough to speak out!
What is Mr. Beck hiding?