Hall Of Fame

In continuing our mission to tell you about some of the best media on the planet! Here is this weeks Pixels to Polys: Hall of Fame

The Game: ActRaiser

Once upon a time, Square Enix was two separate companies that made games people could actually enjoy…games that were unique and didn’t all end in “inal Fantasy.” One of these rare titles was ActRaiser for the SNES, a unique little concoction that married a traditional side scroller with a city building sim. Weird, you bet it was. Awesome…definitely. During the game the player fills the role of Master, a not so ambiguous God knockoff set on reviving civilization. You spend half of the time being omnipotent, helping your idiotic followers and such, until trouble strikes and you have to go down and wallop a demon or something. Perhaps my only complaint about this game is that I can’t be an “angry-fire-and-brimstone” God, sending plagues and shit…oh well. In the end ActRaiser proved to be one of most enjoyable games for the SNES and the fact that Square Enix has abandoned this franchise is travesty; perhaps a sin against God...actually, maybe the concept’s a sin against God, but who cares? Blasphemy’s the rave these days…

-Matt

The Movie: Layer Cake

“You're born, you take shit. You get out in the world, you take more shit. You climb a little higher, you take less shit. Till one day you're up in the rarefied atmosphere and you've forgotten what shit even looks like. Welcome to the layer cake son.”
Those lines really do seem to carry some weight. This is seriously one of my favorite flicks, one of those that if I feel like I just can’t decide, this will do the trick. It charts the path of a character, (whose name is never reveled and you really might not notice that until he points it out in the end) who has gotten into the middle-man drug business but has as he calls it “a plan”. A nice round million and he is out, and we’re talking pounds not dollars. Daniel Craig plays a character that puts aside the reality of the illegality of drugs and runs it like a business, with a plan, rules, and an exit strategy. The thing that makes this movie so great over all those other drug movies is the way, like in most drug movies, even the best laid plans by the most thorough individuals can go awry from sources beyond our control. The result is death, betrayal, a little bit of comedy and the enough twists and turns along the way to make you wonder what is really happening behind all the noise. It happens in such a way that it keeps you hanging on for the whole ride and really enjoying all the events that seem like noise but in the end just seem to weave into the whole story in fluid motion. This really is a great flick for any person who is looking for a little action, suspense and drugs thrown into the mix. Cheers.

-Pat

The Album: Weezer (Blue Album)

There was a time when argyle-nerdcore had become a mainstream identity package that you could buy at Old Navy and Hot Topic and being a hipster-geek kind of sucked. I wouldn’t know, because I have always been the man, but people tell me. In the heart of the grunge era came one of the greatest pop-rock albums ever recorded. Weezer’s self titled classic, aka The Blue Album, dared to be catchy and sing-songy in an musical climate drenched in overdrive, flannel and greasy hair. The album was the counterpart to Nirvana’s Nevermind, the other logical extension in post-Pixies loudQUIETloud age of rock. There are no throw-away songs, and any one could be your favorite: The Sweater Song with its overt metaphor, Only In Dreams dripping with whimsy, No One Else with its ridiculous demands, and the dynamic/fantastic Say It Ain’t So. Nearly 15 years old, the album remains a timeless piece of distilled joy.

-Anthony