Okay, so what's the point of a videogame?  Why do you play games?  Do you play them to be educated?  Do you play them to learn (some aspect of) history?  Do you play because they're entertaining and fun?  On two of these three counts the latest Test Drive title, Test Drive:  Ferrari Racing Legends gets good marks, on the third not so much....more

My son is 14 and is an absolute Pokemon fanatic. Not only does he have huge stacks of Pokemon cards covering his bureau, he can recite every statistic and attack for just about every Pokemon character known to man. When he was younger, he also had the toys and regularly had battles with friends. Now that he's a teenager, he's hooked on the Nintendo DS Pokemon games. Since Pokemon games are generally rated E for everyone, I'm good with his addiction....more

Cancer, for Anita Moorjani, was a devastating diagnosis. I know. I was recently told I have pancreatic cancer and can relate to her. As she explains in Dying to be Me, all possible emotions run amok and many are not easy to deal with, especially when family and friends react from their own place in life, attached agenda, and fear. The early chapters of Dying to be Me begin with the reader understanding Moorjani’s Indian culture and belief system. She also addresses arranged marriage and suppression of women while giving them a role of only being a submissive wife. This concept didn’t resonate with her, and although she submitted to an arranged marriage, she also called it off, much to the distaste of family and friends. In the end, Moorjani did meet her soulmate and married; he was accepted by her family and the marriage grew in strength....more

The Synthesis Effect: Your Direct Path To Personal Power and Transformation by Dr.John Mc Grail is a wonderful book which explains the mind from birth together with strategies to live life fully devoid of avoidable pain, suffering and the negations of stress. According to Dr.McGrail, the seven deadly memes of class consciousness are an obsession with lack or denial, the crave for control, personal and societal isolation, empiricism or the need to prove everything, the separation of the spiritual and physical realms, conditional love and falsely derived self esteem....more

There is a distinct genre (or subgenre, perhaps) of films in which women have their apparently happy (often married) lives completely wrecked (generally by an unfaithful husband) and then go off to find themselves.  Under the Tuscan Sun, the focus of this review, unquestionably falls into the genre. While often uplifting in the end, there is a serious and very real discussion to be had about these films and the actual message which they impart.  If the woman ends up with a new man is the film suggesting that women can only be happy if they're in a relationship?...more

Anyone who has ever had a parent surely knows that nobody can quite screw up your life as well as they can. It's bound to happen just about anywhere in the world — and our brothers and sisters in Italy are certainly not exempt from that sort of embarrassment. Case in point: the 2010 Italian dramedy, La Prima Cosa Bella, better known in the English tongue as The First Beautiful Thing. This sometimes lighthearted/frequently serious yarn from Paolo Virzì, whom many consider a traditional Italian comedy filmmaker, follows the oft-heartbreaking plights of Michelucci clan: Bruno, Valeria, and their mother, Anna....more

The Angel's Game is a prequel to Carlos Ruiz Zafón's previous novel Shadow of the Wind. I’m very excited about Carlos Luis Zafón's new book The Prisoner of Heaven coming out this month, so I decided to revisit and post about his previous book, which I read about a year and half ago. David Martin, an orphan, finally achieves success writing the series “City of the Damned”. Martin’s work catches the eye of Andreas Corelli, a publisher from Paris, who offers Martin a large amount of money to use his literary skills to create a new religion....more

You know, one really has to wonder where our advanced society would be today without the diligent pioneering efforts of animators William Hanna and Joseph Barbara. Why, without shows like The Flintstones, we might not have foot-powered cars made out of wood and stone. Were it not for The Jetsons, we wouldn't be flying jet-cars and being waited on by robotic maids. And, if Hanna-Barbara not have given us the lesser-known animated cult classic, Sealab 2020, there stands an excellent chance that manned undersea scientific compounds would still be a figment of some sci-fi writer's imagination....more

Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo first came to my attention when he directed the sequel to Danny Boyle's excellent pseudo-zombie film 28 Days Later, the movie was cleverly titled 28 Weeks Later. The sequel was impressive in how it built on the first, felt like it was in the same universe, but also stood on its own as a strong film. When it was announced that his follow up was going to be a psychological thriller, I was certainly interested. It also did not hurt that he was able to attract Clive Owen to play the lead role. It has been four years since he appeared on my radar, was the wait worth it?...more

Disney Pixar’s Brave movie might have spent a relatively short amount of time, for a Pixar movie, on top of the box office rankings but those other movies on the list don’t (all) have games to support them.  Disney Interactive has done a great job lately of showing the industry how to put out quality licensed games....more