"You're waiting for a train...": thoughts on Inception

So I just recently watched Inception for the first time, and I know I'm a bit late, but anyone who's seen it knows that it inspires discussion. A lot of it. I've had about a day to mull it over and argue with people about it, so here's the stuff that's still sticking in my head, unresolved. Obviously, there will be massive SPOILERS afoot if you haven't seen it, so be warned.

Moore's Law in action

(source)

Mindblowing CGI

Check out this video on Vimeo. Yes, that really is 100% computer generated, nothing you're seeing is real. This is really incredible, it's leaps and bounds beyond anything I've ever seen before.

Called It

Sure, the Beatles are good and all, but "Tomorrow is another day. That you'll never forget."? Really, Apple? Yawn.

New things!

First off, Girl Talk's new album, All Day, was released for free download online this morning! As of now, their servers are still swamped, but there's a mirror on Mediafire here. I'm listening to it now, and I'm really liking it so far. I would put it ahead of Feed the Animals, but still a bit behind Night Ripper.

This Week's Episode of "Aging Executives Who Don't Understand The 21st Century"

I read this article earlier today about videogame retailers fighting back against Valve's Steam, the digital distribution platform I've previously gushed about here. According to the article, Steam is responsible for a whopping 80% of videogames downloaded on PCs (using "PC" to mean any personal computer, not just those running Windows). Apparently a number of UK videogame retailers are threatening not to stock any games distributed by Steam, to try and pressure publishers into not using steam. From the article:

The head of sales at a big-name digital service provider agreed: “At the moment the big digital distributors need to stock games with Steam. But the power resides with bricks and mortar retailers, they can refuse to stock these titles. Publishers are hesitant, but retail must put pressure on them.”

Yup, the power definitely does reside with the brick and mortar stores. Just to be safe, they should ask Hollywood and Blockbuster how they successfully put pressure on Netflix in order to.... oh.

L.A. Noire

This is the first I've heard of this game, developed by Team Bondi and published by Rockstar Games, of Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption fame. The setting is an uncommon one for a videogame: film-noir Los Angeles from the late 1940s, and the atmosphere they've created looks pretty cool. On a more technical level, the characters' facial animation looks incredible. The people move very smoothly and naturally, and the developers claim that the player will be given an "open-ended challenge to solve a series of murders". Unfortuantely, it's coming out for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, neither of which I own,  but it looks like it could be a quite interesting game to follow.

EDIT: Embedding doesn't seem to be working right, you can check out the video on the original page here.

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