This thread is all about ranting and raving about something you think everyone should enjoy - a movie, a show, music, food, a city you visited. This something should be relatively unheard of to the mass majority and you should be able to write a review (a short one at least) detailing why you think it's worth checking out.
Personally, I'm a big fan of movies and decent anime. Once I've seen it, everybody has to know about it.

So, to start things off, let me talk to you about a wonderful anime I just finished watching:

SAMURAI 7

Samurai 7 is based off Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai which was filmed in 1954. The 26 episode series takes place in the future around a small village in need of some hired help to get rid of the Noburesi (the Bandits) who repeatedly come back to raid their rice fields. The village sends a girl with a small entourage to find samurai who will help defend them from the bandits.

Throughout the series, I was impressed to find how greatly the characters and story were developed. It's not up there with great animes like Cowboy Bebop or Lain but this is no Dragonball Z either. This series truly makes great strides in trying to honor Kurosawa's classic original while taking on a new audience with sci-fi themes melded in.

Check it out if you have the means

I'm all about my books. They pretty much kick ass, and if you ever need an idea, you're bound to find inspiration somewhere in the three hundred pages a book usually provides. A couple of the good ones are as follows.

Catch-22 is one of the most confusing, kickest-ass books ever. The most accurate way to describe it that I've come across is much like Jalonso's parallax effects... sort of. There are a bunch of layers, basically, and they interact peculiarly, but in an appealing way. On top of that, it tugs at most emotions out there, save for the very most popular. It's set in a war, but I still honestly have no idea WHICH war, and I didn't know who the main character was till a good three chapters in.

To take a maturity-step down, you've got The Uglies By Scott westerfield. Not that phenomenal a storyline, but a lot of sweet pokes at the way we see things. Cool book.

Last on the novel run is Castaways of the Flying Dutchman by Brian Jacques. Just a cool book, and it DOES have religious undertones, but it's rather cool nonetheless. Basically the kid is immortal and young, and goes around bein' a good kid, kicking the sh*t outta bulles, and the like.

On to the NON-BOOK books. I have but a few words to say on the subject, and they go as follows: Calvin and Hobbes.

Yep, I'm a booknerd, not a 'puter nerd.

Those are some of the reasons I love The Twilight Zone, blink.

P.S. Calvin and Hobbes rocks.

lol you guys have good taste! I read a bit of Catch-22 and loved it, Chrono Trigger PWNS and I've got the Complete Calvin & Hobbes collection.

Fast Food Nation is the reason I went semi-vegetarian. It's amazingly SHOCKING how little we know about what we're eating. Not saying they're aren't some corrupt veggie companies, but this book has some astounding and almost frightening facts.

I'm really enjoying reading Star Wars and Philosophy. I also have Harry Potter and Philosophy and there's plenty more in the series including other pop culture references. Seinfeld, The Simpsons, The Matrix, Buffy the Vamprite Slayer, LotR, Baseball, The Sopranos, Woody Allen, to even Mel Gibson's Passion and Philosophy. I really enjoy philosophy myself. It's fascinating to me. But this particular Star Wars one is filled with cool essays with titles such as: "Stoicism in the Stars: Yoda, the Emperor, and the Force," "Size Matters Not: The Force as the Casual Power of the Jedi," and "A Certain Point of View: Lying Jedi, Honest Sith, and the Viewers Who Love Them". Essays FTW.

And if you're interested in philosophy, I'd definately try Sophie's World. It's a cool book. It can be a little dry from time to time, but it's definately got some amazingly cool parts.

There's enough hubbub about The DaVinci Code, but in my opinion Angels & Demons is much more entertaining and dynamic. It's not as predictable and it's got a lot of twists and turns.

One of the most amazing pieces of ficition that really impressed me was Black Rain by Masuji Ibuse. It's about the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It's really dramatic and descriptive. I really loved it.

Also, as far as music, I reccomend Rammstein to everyone. Some of their lyrics aren't very... well, what people would consider "decent" I suppose, but the lead singer sounds amazing, the band sounds amazing, and they're completely awesomely awesome. The best Rammstein song IMO? "Sonne" is the best one by far.


Edited by Aleiav

Marvel Comics, Civil War series
This comic book series is a very suspenseful and politically driven one, and it spans into other comic book series' such as Spiderman.  It is the series that made Spiderman unmask himself to the public.  Very good series.

You could all enjoy shmups as they are the only remnant  of an era gone by. For some quality freeware try Aba games.

Robot Chicken: Why? Never have I seen a show so random and yet funny. The cool thing about it is, you don't have any characters you have to know or any previous storylines to follow. So you can start watching it at any time and still think it's hilarious. It's basically made up of small skits dealing with pop culture and other references making jokes and satire. It's really random and funny. Definately one of the best shows on Adult Swim, by far.

If you don't believe me, watch one of the skits.


Edited by Aleiav - 25 July 2006 at 7:17pm

oops sorry. I'm not sure if Robot Chicken is really all that popular however. Not as popular as any other big cartoon like Family Guy. But I'll add more of my reasoning for why Robot Chicken is awesome. :P

Great idea for a thread PB... I like seeing people's passions in a bit more detail.

Secret of Monkey Island if you have not tried it. I'm not gonna name reasons, it's just overall great. ><;

Recently I found a few good freeware games, mostly clones of popular mainstream games. Here are a couple:

Grid Wars - clone of popular Geometry Wars Xbox live arcade game. It was shut down, but you can still download. It seems less fast paced? Or maybe I'm just getting better? Sigh.

Frets on Fire - (finally) a Guitar Hero clone like Stepmania is for DDR. It's very simple and only has 3 songs it comes with, but the community creates more so you're in for hours of fun, or at least 10 mins. Instead of a plastic guitar, it suggests you play your keyboard like a guitar, which I tried and it's really not all that bad. Plucking with the return key just doesn't work too well. :P

Plasma Pong - not a clone necessarily, but an extension of Pong. it's great with hallucinatory hallogens! not that we... would .. actually do that....