It seems that the Studio behind the latest Tomb Raider movie is blaming the recent lackluster Tomb Raider games for the movie not doing well.

Studio Cites Game for Weak ‘Tomb Raider’ Sequel

Mon July 28, 2003 06:07 PM ET
By Ben Berkowitz

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The romance between Hollywood and the video game industry is suddenly a lot chillier after the studio behind “Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life” on Monday cited problems with a related game for the sequel’s weaker-than-expected debut.

The movie and video game industries have grown closer in recent years as films increasingly are tied in to games and games, in turn, are licensed as movies.

But the comments by Paramount Pictures underscore the tensions between the two sides when sales disappoint.

“The Cradle of Life,” the second film based on games heroine Lara Croft, opened in fourth place at the U.S. box office last weekend with sales of $21.7 million, well below the opening weekend of 2001’s “Tomb Raider.”

.The film, released by Viacom Inc.’s Paramount Pictures unit, faced heavy competition, but was still weaker than most in the industry had expected. [Reuters]

So it wasn’t that most of the reviews said it was pretty lame. Nope, the movie couldn’t possibly suck.

I was having a hard enough time sleeping as it is and you had to go and post this:

fun…
Sore Eyes (via Off On A Tangent):  “Plastic Balls is a thoroughly addictive Flash game. I don’t have the hand-eye coordination or reflexes to be really good at it, but I can easily see myself wasting the remainder of the evening trying.” [jenett.radio]

It’s like circular breakout, with a bit of arkanoid added in. It’s frustratingly fun.

Alan Kay: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” [Quotes of the Day]

(Crossposted to the anime blog).

I’m not sure when this happened, but it must have been somewhat recently (correction: it looks like it happened back in February, I really am behind the times). Anime News Network now has an RSS feed. Now we just need Anime on DVD to put one up (I’ll help if they want).

(Crossposted to the anime blog).

I’m not sure when this happened, but it must have been somewhat recently (correction: it looks like it happened back in February, I really am behind the times). Anime News Network now has an RSS feed. Now we just need Anime on DVD to put one up (I’ll help if they want).

After hearing someone rave about Knights of the Old Republic, I just had to give it a try. A few days later I’m still hooked. This is one of the best Star Wars based games I’ve ever played. The game takes place long long before the movies and you play a character who gets caught up in a pretty epic adventure. So far I’ve been to three planets, have become a jedi, wield two lightsabers at once, and can kick ass quite well. Lucasarts got the whole feel of Star Wars down perfectly.

Actually, the game was developed by Bioware, the folks who have written lots of great RPGs for the PC. So it is no big surprise they did a kickass job with this. You really can play the game any way you like, either as a good guy or being more of an evil jedi. Right now I’m being a good guy,b ut I want to start a second game where I’m a mean and nasty jedi.

As usual, some random thoughts on episodes are hidden behind the more. There’s some great stuff in this batch. Stellvia, Scrapped Princess, Naruto, and Narutaru. All of which had great episodes recently. Though the one that I think struck me the most was Narutaru. So read on. There’s not too much here for spoilers, but there are some here and there.

Halley writes about her experiences with spending a whole day (mostly) silent.

Someone pointed me at this page for a great new programming language called Whitespace.

What is Whitespace?

Most modern programming languages do not consider white space characters (spaces, tabs and newlines) syntax, ignoring them, as if they weren’t there. We consider this to be a gross injustice to these perfectly friendly members of the character set. Should they be ignored, just because they are invisible? Whitespace is a language that seeks to redress the balance. Any non whitespace characters are ignored; only spaces, tabs and newlines are considered syntax.

I love it! Someone obviously had way too much time on their hands or was taking some really interesting drugs when they thought up this.

The New York Times has a nice article about one of my favorite places to shop: Trader Joe’s.

Trader Joe’s, now 45 years old, has an unusual approach: it sells upscale specialty food and wine at lower-than-average prices, and roughly 80 percent of what it stocks is sold under private labels, like Trader Joe’s, Trader Jacques’ and Trader Ming’s. By contrast, at a typical supermarket, private labels account for about 16 percent of the stock. And Trader Joe’s products have sassy names, like Rosencrunch & Guildenpop caramel popcorn. [NYTimes]

I always feel like I just don’t get there often enough. I do love their selection though. I always find cool things to munch on, and many of their frozen foods are great. I guess I’ll make a trip there tomorrow.