Macbeth set in feudal Japan. I’m not a huge fan of tragedy, but it was interesting to see Shakespeare’s universal themes played out by samurai.

The interviews are interesting, but the rest of the book suffers from a tremendously narrow concept of “game” and is about ten times longer than it needs to be to communicate what it does have to say.

Stylish, wacky, fun-poking and entertaining. It lacked the occasional brilliant bit of dialogue or outrageous situation that Tarrantino’s films have had in the past, but you can’t hit ‘em all out of the park.

An economic investigation of a bunch of mundane phenomena. I found it interesting, mostly because I’m a fan of looking at things from an economic perspective. Who wouldn’t want to know the cost structures of a crack distribution organization?

At first I thought I had the subtitles off, then I realized that no one was doing any speaking in this film. Later I realized that I did have the subtitles off, but it didn’t really matter. It was a fantastical trip through a strange world of really skinny or really fat French people. And the music was lovely.

Pure unadulterated racing antics. I’m glad to see the controls return to a more N64-style, I wasn’t a big fan of the GBA or GC controls. Bringing back tracks from previous Karts is brilliant. The few new items are well conceived, local area wireless play rocks the house, Internet play is a nice bonus. It is all around juicy goodness.

I devoured it like a bowl of chocolate ice cream. Mmm… ice cream. How a translation of a Japanese product can consistently be the funniest game around does boggle the mind. Perhaps in-jokes about the Mario franchise span cultures, or the translators were chemically inspired. The platform-style RPG battles remain appealing. The bosses unfailingly succumbed to my pouncing blows mere moments after I wondered, “When in the hell is this battle going to end?” A neat, tidy package of fun.

A fascinating summary of the various mechanisms used by “compliance professionals” to influence our decision making. Particularly interesting are the studies where the subjects were asked either in advance or after the fact whether they thought the mechanism in question would influence them and they confidently denied it, yet the statistics told a different story.

A well told story of a guy with a psychotic wife, a mentally deficient brother, a recently dead father and a growing desire to sleep with his housekeeper. As a part of the Dogme95 project, this was all done without props, makeup, soundtrack, computers, dollies, or directorial credit. A bit ascetic, to be sure, but the movie turned out well.

An orgy of special effects. The film was not entirely without redeeming value, but the characters were generally either being annoying or stupid and my ability to suspend disbelief ran out right about when everyone was handily dodging brontosaurus legs in the middle of a stampede.

A very self-conscious and tongue-in-cheek thriller that struggles at points, but comes through with some real tension and enough humor to smooth over the rough edges.

A ponderous film. There is, of course, the hot samurai on samurai action, but the motives of the characters are mighty difficult to puzzle out and all the voiced internal dialogue and visualized hypothesizing doesn’t make it any easier.

Another solid addition to the Sly Cooper line. Numerous entertaining mini-games, lots of leaping raccoon action, amusing story and dialogue. The 3D glasses are a silly gimmick, but fortunately you can not use them. I was impressed that they managed to squeeze in an homage to both Sid Meier’s Pirates and Monkey Island in their pirate episode. Arr!