I love pla­ying this game, des­pite its replay flaws (i.e. there are none in the xbox ver­sion), the exhi­la­ra­tion of mul­ti­pla­yer Road Rage on the new tracks in unbeatable.

A great satire that mana­ges to make a ciga­rette lobb­yist the hero, somehow.

“Aaron Eckhart holds the pic­ture together with a witty, cha­ris­ma­tic per­for­mance as a tobacco lobb­yist. The film is basi­cally about his pro­fes­sion as he spins the news, pitches a movie idea, dod­ges a sub­poena, has an affair with a repor­ter (Katie Hol­mes), tries to spend time with his son (Came­ron Bright), and has lunch with an alcohol lobb­yist (Maria Bello) and a firearms rep (David Koech­ner) — where they lite­rally com­pare body counts. The per­for­man­ces are exce­llent across the board, from William H. Macy’s cru­sa­ding Sena­tor to Rob Lowe’s smir­king Holly­wood agent who struts around his office in a kimono. Even Adam Brody is enjo­ya­ble as Lowe’s hype­rac­tive assis­tant whose in-joke with a co-worker ear­ned one of the big­gest laughs of the movie.

The majo­rity of the cre­dit, howe­ver, needs to go to first-time fea­ture direc­tor Jason (son of Ivan) Reit­man. Adap­ting from Chris­topher Buckley’s novel, Reit­man has fashio­ned an enor­mously cle­ver script, con­sis­tent and strong in cha­rac­ter, yet not for­get­ting to be inc­re­dibly funny. The style is also per­fect — brisk, light-hearted, with impec­ca­ble timing marred only by a tan­gen­tal sub­plot inc­lu­ding Sam Elliott that is, sadly, not very funny. Ove­rall, howe­ver, the pace is fast enough where the laughs keep coming.

Reit­man also does the unthin­ka­ble: he keeps the satire dark and funny to the very end. While most come­dies stray blindly into the sen­ti­men­tal, “Thank You” avoids unne­ces­sary emo­tio­nal tripe and — thank­fully — avoids ser­mo­ni­zing about the dan­gers of smo­king or of the flaws of the poli­ti­cal pro­cess. Eckhart’s flaw­less per­for­mance and Reitman’s won­der­ful screen­play anchor an uncom­monly per­cep­tive comedy, pro­vi­ded you take yours black. If you need a little cream and sugar, “Fun with Dick and Jane” might still be at the dollar theater. — Com­ments writ­ten by Paxa­tron”

What the heck; this is a track from the 1998 Hindi film “Dil Se” or in English “From the Heart”. Chaiyya Chaiyya, Shah­rukh Khan, Malaika Arora and a dan­cing troupe are cho­reo­graphed dan­cing on top of a moving train. The group did not wear safety har­nes­ses during this scene. I dis­co­ve­red this song after watching Spike Lee’s “Inside Man” (a recom­men­da­tion) in which it is pla­yed during the intro and once more at the cre­dits. It’s quite a catchy little num­ber and seems to be gro­wing in popu­la­rity in the wes­tern world.

I have pre-ordered the Nin­tendo Wii and Legend of Zelda — Twi­light Prin­cess; with this intro­duc­tion and another trai­ler for the game being relea­sed yes­ter­day and the airing of the South Park epi­sode whe­rein Cart­man cryo­ge­ni­cally free­zes him­self to avoid the wait for Wii my anti­ci­pa­tion is gro­wing rapidly: “It’s like wai­ting for Christ­mas… times a thou­sand!”. The lands­cape in this video reminds me an awful lot of Sha­dow of the Colos­sus, which for me is the pin­nacle of ori­gi­nal inno­va­tive gaming on the Plays­ta­tion 2.

Devil Got My Woman, per­for­med by Skip James in 1966 at New­port. This is not con­cert foo­tage from New­port. Alan Lomax rec­rea­ted a juke joint at New­port, stoc­ked the bar, and let nature take its course.

Another of the gems I dis­co­ve­red via the Ghost World sound­track. Truly a mind ben­ding track and this foo­tage is stunning.