Holy shit, his French accent is spot on.

Useless fact of the week: Hatori Henzo's assistant is Space Sheriff Gavan, himself something of a sword enthusiast.

(I am old.)

If you liked Suzuki's visuals and cinematography, I can only recommend Tokyo Drifter, a Yakuza movie that was a kind of pioneer in perverting the codes of the genre.

If you like 60s Japanese period flicks with a Sergio-Leonesque take on the Samurais genre, Suzuki also made a couple, but in that case do also have a look at Kenji Misumi's work, better known as the director of the original Zatoichi The Blind Swordsman, and of course as the main director of Lone Wolf And Cub, a.k.a Baby Kart. The two first movies were kind-of-butchered, re-cut and re-dubbed as "Shogun Assassin" in the USA; but the real thing is six movies long, and all of them are worth it in my opinion.

*promote

TL;DR: "Original, yet evocative."

That's what I meant to say. I am not a concise person.

"My job: trolling the jungle."

Fallout 1 was a technically antiquated VGA (that's right, 640x480, 256 colours) post-apocalyptic turn-based tactical RPG where you could not control you team mates during combat. It was a bit buggy (and so was F2). It was Mad Max, without cars.

And yet.

Fallout is arguably the best world-building work in the history of video games. People are probably going to dispute that, but most other games are built on pre-existing lore or works, or do not have that scope*. Fallout built its world pretty much from scratch, conflating a pre-war 1950's, golden-era, overly-optimistic world-view with the bleak desolation of the nuclear holocaust that ensued (to clarify for those who really know nothing about Fallout: in this universe a nuclear war happened in the 50s**. all that's left is from that era). Beside its content which was plentiful in and of itself, this created a contrasted, yet highly coherent and mature world (and by mature I don't just mean killing friendly NPC, I mean doing Morally Very Bad Things that don't necessarily result in graphic scenes). An open world that you could roam freely, be surprised by a new discovery that you made, and at the same time find these discoveries to fit perfectly with the game's logic. In most large games you just access new areas or are carried by the story, in Fallout you would go "Holy shit I'm in the middle of a city populated by centenarian ghouls!", shortly followed by "ho, of course it's full of ghouls, that's perfectly normal". There are not many games that have this mix of unexpected/logical and dark/humorous content.

Fallout 2 had the same ho-my-God-how-could-they-get-away-with-it VGA engine (so next to zero evolution there), but quadrupled the world map (with a minimum overlap with the one from F1) and brought it fifty or so years forward, expanding the world greatly (there are now rival quasi-city-states, and your action may influence their future), while also building on the first one: some antagonists 'classes' from F1 have now grown their own identity and became NPC, and some characters are still around -- a young character you saved in F1 went back to her settlement, became its leader, built it into a town, and is now in the process of expanding it into a new state...So Fallout 2 is basically the same game, except they did that one important thing: push the game world's boundaries even more. You could never guess what next city would be like, but you could bet it would have some crazy shit in it, and yet somehow still make sense.

That's why many people don't like Fallout 3. It is not in itself a bad game, but comparatively, it's kind of coasting. Also it's too damn easy.

I'm sorry, I got carried away, you were asking if you should play the previous ones? No, you 'should' not. But you could, and for F1 & F2 you would certainly not lose your time if you know what you're getting into. And if you don't, at least go and watch their intro on Youtube, they'll give you the feel of the world.

* Possible contenders in terms of "original video game world": Elder Scrolls (vast, but less original), Deus ex (not as large), Bioshock (same), Final Fantasy (original and vast, but not as complex). Any other idea?
** Technically not the 1950s, but in practice the 50s + a bunch of high tech gizmo.

Or alternatively, Forbes and their imaginary investors could just fuck off, since Gravity is privately held...

They are in the payment processing business, historically a high-margin one, they're not going anywhere any time soon.

Bayonets. What the fuck America.

Sam and Jason have a new show of their own starting soon. This was announced before Jon's replacement was named, which means it must have been planned several months before Jon even made the subject public. This also explains why at least Jason (don't know about Sam) went on the record fairly early saying he was not interested in taking over TDS.

This also raises the issue that some people may want to host 'their' show, but not TDS, a show with a very specific tone/theme, and quite time-consuming at that. People only think of the prestige, but filling in after a guy with a big rep and who was is own producer might not be the most comfortable of things. Especially if like Jon you end up with the sum total of 1 side project in 16 years.

That doesn't mean the TDS staff may not have been talking backstage early on (I can imagine them seeing Colbert, then Stewart walking away, or starting to talk about it, and some thinking to themselves that maybe it's time for a change), but they probably decided what to do on their own, way before any decision for TDS was definitive.

Siblings?
http://videosift.com/video/Cockatoo-mimics-an-arguing-couple

Troll Club.

Jesus Christ, Franco's acting is awful here, even by slapstick standard.

Not a line of dialogue that isn't cringe-worthy.
This trailer felt just like after having watched Elysium: realizing with a sense of dread that District 9 may very well have been an accident.

Sorry to be a buzzkill, fellow sci-fi fans.

Relevant:
http://www.theguardian.com/membership/video/2014/oct/16/david-simon-the-wire-video