General Cinemassacre Thread

While we're all familiar with The Angry Video Game Nerd, and, to a lesser extend, Board James, Mr. Rolfe has also done quite a few other impressive independent films that you can see on his website (under the "films" tab.)

I'm really quite sad that some of these films are overlooked, they're often quite good.

My favorite one I've seen so far is the short film "Legend of the Blue Hole", based on an Urban Legend in southern New Jersey. It's pretty interesting, and it really goes to show just how talented James is as a director. It also has one hell of a twist at the end, very reminiscent of a Twilight Zone episode.

Lots of people (and some Trolls) are really butthurt over James asking for help for the Angry Video Game Nerd Movie. Couple highlights:

• "I would love to know what you really plan to do with that 300k because we all know this is a huge scam and the movie will never come out. I can't say I blame you though if people were dumb enough to give me 300k to make a movie about a guy yelling ASS! at a 20 year old video game I would take there money and run too. [...] Trust me the movie is never going to happen. James is living the good life off of all you suckers money. James has no obligation to make the movie. If he says oh I don't want to make the movie now and keeps all the money there is nothing anyone can do about it, but knowing how all these "fans" behave they will still worship him even if he takes the money and doesn't make the movie."

• "Turner Broadcasting pays him, not to mention the companies who pay to advertise through his sight. every click = $ for James."

I confess, I think it's weird of James to hold out his hat like that.

In my honest, humble opinion, I think maybe he didn't anticipate all of the expenses. He can't run the movie on donations alone, probably some stuff came on the way and he didn't quite had it all planned. Regardless of this, I know James is a very talented filmmaker, and, considering all the fan support he's gotten, the movie is most likely going to turn out alright. I wish I could do something beyond donating, though.

The latest Board James episode is brilliant.

I gotta rant a bit.

I watched all the AVGN episodes, twice. I watched all the Board James episodes, and a lot of the movie reviews. I was enjoying all of that stuff; if I wasn't, I wouldn't keep on looking for more videos James had done.

So I thought "Okay, I'll check out James And Mike Mondays!"

I watched a lot of videos and enjoyed those too. It was fun to watch them play stuff like Sunsoft's Batman, Mega Man 2, and Contra.

But then I watch them try to play Indiana Jones And The Infernal Machine. It pretty much went like this:

-James, Mike, and some guy who designs the website start up the game without knowing anything about it.
-They try a bunch of stuff, and don't get anywhere.
-They die a bunch of times.
-Very quickly, all three of them are talking about how shitty the game is, how surprised they were that Lucas Arts would release such a bad game, how it was probably developed in like a day and a half, etc.

Here's the thing. When it came out, it was well-received according to Wikipedia. The YMMV page for that game says that the N64 version they were playing is an example of a Polished Port.

If they knew what they were doing and how the game worked, they might have done better and had more fun. But they didn't even try to learn.

James was born in 1980, right? Okay, I'm just a few years older than he is, and I grew up with all the same games he did. Maybe it's because I played a lot of PC games as well as NES/SNES games, but when I first got into gaming as a kid I learned very early that you NEED to read the instructions! Either that or read Nintendo Power, or both. But read something. Do your homework. I know homework sucks, and that the idea of playing games is to get away from things like homework, but it's worth it. You can't get good at a game if you don't spend some time learning about it.

Most new releases today come with tutorials, and if these three guys were all 15 or 16 and were like "Hey, where's the tutorial? All the other games we play have tutorials! You mean this one doesn't?! Wow, what a shitty piece of shit!" then I'd understand. If you're used to not bothering with instruction booklets or .pdf files or whatever, and just jumping into the game and learning as you play, then not having that luxury would kind of suck.

But again, these guys are roughly my age. The games they—and I—grew up with didn't have tutorials. You had a choice: either do a bit of reading, or suck and die. I knew that, so they should know it too.

I'm both amazed that they didn't learn that lesson—particularly when they did an AVGN episode all about Nintendo Power and how necessary the tips in it were to beat certain games—and kind of pissed off that they'd write a game off as shit and tell people to stay away from it just because they were, well, stupid and/or lazy.

I know that he gets most of these games used and they don't always come with the original instructions, but that's what the internet is for. If you have a problem, just fucking google it. You don't even have to leave the couch; you can just pull out your phone.

EDIT TO ADD: Also, this is more or less a Let's Play, right? I have never, ever, ever watched a Let's Play where the LP'er knew almost nothing about how the game worked and just started pressing buttons to see what each one did. Even people doing blind runs bother to learn how the controls work and stuff like that before they begin.

edited 4th Sep '15 9:52:06 AM by KilgoreTrout

Monster Madness kicks off once again! No general theme again unfortunately, but what could've James done this year? Oh well. Now Mike's in the mix but today's review was a regular styled one.