Sometimes I will wait on seeing a movie because I’m unsure it’s worth seeing in theaters. Most of the time when I make this call, I will forget about the movie until I hear someone talking about how terrible it was, and I will smile and grin because my system works.
This is not one of those movies. Fantastic Mr. Fox is a movie that I should have seen in theaters. I watched it twice in past 12 hours. I laughed and smiled and enjoyed the movie equally both times. This movie is a 10/10, worth paying to see, worth watching over and over again movie.
2009 was an excellent year for animation: Coraline, Ponyo, and Fantastic Mr Fox all are keepers.
This is the new Gorillaz song, Super Fast Jelly Fish.
So, a little over one year into the Obama presidency, and here we stand. The depression has deepened, the homeless and jobless rate is skyscraping, but The Administration insists the worst is over. The war is expanding into new territories, even though we stretched our military too thin years ago. Civil liberties are being taken at a record pace, for any reason our rulers can find to take them. We’re spending money we don’t have like it’s going out of style, to the point where other countries are refusing to lend to us anymore, and for good reason. Picking up in almost every way where the Bush administration left off, Obama’s approval rating is below 50% and dropping fast, and America’s praise for his colleagues on the Hill is barely half that high.
And therein lies the hope.
Recently the people of Massachusetts, the most liberal state in the nation, rattled the Democrats’ cage when they elected a Republican senator, a clear and outright rejection of the anti-capitalist, anti-free-market, anti-freedom policies of Obama and his party. Because of popular outcry, the government healthcare takeover bill has been severely weakened and even has a good chance of failing, forcing Congress to go back and take a fundamental look at what they are trying to accomplish and work towards it slowly instead of ramming something through. Ron Paul’s initiative to, for the first time ever, audit the Federal Reserve, the keeper of America’s fiscal policy, is growing wings. The man himself can be seen on news programs almost daily, a surprise but yet an encouragement to people like myself who support his platform.
Even if it is, for now, a bit overshadowed by the faux/pseudo-libertarian neocon movement, the true libertarian party is growing, its ideology spreading. Americans are starting to reject the Republicans and the Democrats, realizing they are just two wings of the same party. An intellectual the likes of Peter Schiff who, four years ago, was being laughed at for his economic outlook, is now running for Senate with a great shot at winning, and there we can take hope in the gradual restoration of sound money policies and Constitutional values. The libertarian ideology’s threatening effects to the establishment can be seen in the removal of people like John Stossel and Lou Dobbs from the airwaves. Andrew Napolitano will probably be next. But we must take hope that it’s too late to chill a movement that’s already taken hold.
It has become clear that Obama, his administration, and much of the Congress have lost touch with the American people. But there is hope. When the banks and corporations are bailed out before the people, they start to call Obama’s false populist promises for what they are: lies. Civil disobedience against the State is making a comeback, in a way that would make Thoreau proud. The number of thought insurgents is growing every day. Baby roots of iconoclasm are growing in our culture. The paradigm is shifting. The curtain is being torn, and the man behind it may finally have to show his face soon.
People are waking up. The insurgency is alive.
Since the announcement that Final Fantasy XIII would not only be on the Playstation 3 but would also be released for the Xbox360 in America, Fans have bickered back and forth which edition would be superior. What first started as a petty spitting contest between fanboys for either system, soon turned itself back into the heated debate across forums and in stores over which system was better. But for the fans who didn’t care about the systems and focused solely on the game, one fear lingered in their minds, “If the systems versions were equal, what would we lose due to Xbox not using Blu-ray’s space availability?”.
In a recent interview with Final Fantasy XIII’s art director at the Japanese site FF-Reunion, Isamu Kamikokuryou revealed that almost a full games worth of content was removed from the final finished product of Final Fantasy XIII.
Among these removed bits of content was (aside extended dungeons) a secret base for Snow’s hero squad Nora (one time located within Lebreau’s shop), a full area for Lightning’s home (which included a park), and one of the game’s amusement parks also had an extended zoo area that had to be removed. Speculation can only lead one to believe that along with these areas being removed, portions of story that were involved with them were taken as well.
With all the recent heat that the game has gotten for a linear story, its a shame to see that this game was so deeply affected by what one can so plainly see as the inclusion of an Xbox360 edition.
Fans first saw the signs of this possibility when Square-Enix revealed that most of the games side quests would be inaccessible until the later chapters of the game due to the disk restrictions of the Xbox360 and that they were aiming for the Xbox360 version to be merely 3 disks long and story related DLC for the game wouldn’t be a foreseen addition.
While news of the games English version being finally completed may ease the minds of some fans, others who viewed Xbox’s involvement from the begining as quite literally the worst thing for the game will have to now live with knowing what game they could have had if not for Xbox.
UPDATES/FOLLOW-UPS:
2/17 – Final Fantasy XIII looks better on PS3.
2/23 – Insomniac Games believes Final Fantasy XIII is best on PS3
2/24 – CONFIRMED: FINAL FANTASY XIII On XBOX360 Is Half The Size of PS3 Version.
Several months ago I started working a job that required me to work from 10pm to 6am. Simply put I was working the dreaded graveyard shift. Soon after I started working there I met a man named Tyler S. Richardson. Within the months to follow we found ourselves with an amazing amount of rediculous inside jokes. One however, we both loved more than anything else we made to pass the time.
This was our creation of the Awesome Award.
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