Word: alienment
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...best known for 2003's Tomb Raider sequel. The only name is Minnie Driver, who is less than hot these days and has a cameo as the jealous opera diva Carlotta. Although Phantom has kept salaries low by casting virtual unknowns, its $80 million budget puts it between Alien vs. Predator and The Incredibles. An ensemble of 100-plus sings and dances through Schumacher's enormous, immaculately designed soundstages. In addition to the roof set, where stone gargoyles gaze down malevolently, there's the Phantom's Lair - a dark catacomb where the deformed genius composes on his grand piano...
...acoustic-industrial sounds, the violation of this space’s rules through rapidly repeating and panned clicks and cut-and-pasted sounds that pop in and out with no effort to hide their digital artifice or artificiality. Sounds unpredictably enter and exit the space, and an extremely creepy alien groaning/breathing noise pervades the background of the piece’s midsection. In the last third of the piece, deep resonant drums start beating, the background sounds cut out and frighteningly arrhythmic drums and cymbals destroy the mood that had been so laboriously created; again Battles break the rules...
...into a fascinating preoccupation throughout the book, with frequent asides on the exact menu of prison meals, as well as coveted snacks and sweets. Hanawa also introduces memorable characters, such as the Momma's boy, a neatnick who "holds the soap dish with his pinky extended." Hanawa recreates this alien world with laser-like detail, bringing us right into the very mindset of a prisoner. Astonishingly, he has done so completely from memory, having been prevented from drawing while in prison. Displaying the greatest artistic versatility of the nouvelle manga group, Hanawa moves from sharp realism to dramatic expressionism...
...game is called Halo, and it wasn't actually Level 17; it was Level 5. I had been slugging it out for what seemed like--and probably was--hours with a bunch of aliens in an icy canyon. Just as all hope was fading, I seized an alien aircraft and made my escape. I sailed up into the darkening sky with light snow sifting down around me. Moody music, like something from Carmina Burana, swelled in the background. The sounds of battle faded beneath me in the dusk. It was like the end of Platoon, and I was Charlie Sheen...
...original Half-Life borrowed technology from hard-core shoot-'em-ups and used it to spin an absorbing tale about a scientist on the run from scary-gross interdimensional aliens. This had never been done before. Half-Life 2 (PC), which arrives Nov. 16, after six years of work, is one of the most frighteningly atmospheric games I've ever seen. Humanity came out of its interdimensional scrap holding the silver medal, and now we live in an alien-run police state enforced by collaborationist thugs and towering three-legged monstrosities. Long, ringing silences, too bright sunlight and empty streets...