The Way of the Game is returning to our once-and-future mission of serving you well-rounded awesomeness.  If you prefer your chocolate and peanut butter separate, we’ve set up new feeds for you.

• The first feed is just podcast episodes; movies and games.
• The second is all our video game content; posts and podcasts alike.
• The third gives you We Just Watched a Movie on its own.

The home page will always aggregate all our content, but the we’ve broken it all up into categories (and seasons for WotG) for your browsing pleasure.  That should make it easy to get just the content you want, when you want it.  Enjoy!

In this episode, Jonathan’s finally finished Bioshock Infinite and he has stuff to say.

Before that, though, Sam tells us about his new internet service, and Alex tells us about previews of XCOM: The Bureau.

Sam is actually still playing Uncharted 2, rather than having finished it like I might’ve written in the show notes last week.  He has, though, completed Candy Box, and has also played his first Zynga game, What’s the Phrase?

Alex is in the beta for Card Hunter, and it’s exactly what he thought it was going to be and that’s great news.  He’s also been playing Monaco, and so long as you don’t mind throwing stealth out the window, you’ll have a great time playing it with friends.

All Jonathan talks about this week is Bioshock Infinite, and he doesn’t have particularly good things to say about it.  This isn’t because the game is particularly bad, but more because the media surrounding the game made it out to be something far greater than it really is.

The Holmberg’s official rating for Bioshock Infinite: Rent it.

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The Searchers this week.  Some Like It Hot next week.  As always, follow along on our iCheckMovies list, and be sure to let us know how you’d rank the movies in the comments below.

The Searchers – March 13, 1956

Director: John Ford
Producer: Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney
Writers: Frank S. Nugent
Actors: John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles, Ward Bond, Natalie Wood
Distributor: Warner Bros.

The course of the conversation:

I’ll fill this in soon.

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Business: Tell us what you’re hungry for in the comments or on Twitter or wherever else, and you could win a copy of Don’t Starve on Steam.

News: EA gets exclusive rights to the Star Wars license from Disney.  Gamers everywhere weep.

Games:  Jonathan fell down the rabbit holes that are Frog Fractions and Candy Box.  Both are free browser games that explore the history of gaming through utter randomness.  Sam has beaten Uncharted 2: Electric Boogaloo, and he likes that they fixed some stuff, but dislikes quite a bit more.  Alex has played next to nothing this week.

Topic:  Microsoft will be giving us details of their next console on May 21st, so we thought we’d talk a bit about what we expect to see and what we want to see.  We derail at the start talking about how we’re not likely to even want the next Xbox, but we eventually get back on track and pretend to be interested.  Cable TV integration, social gaming, the future of Xbox Live; what do you think we’re going to see?

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Man With a Movie Camera this week (that’s what Netflix calls it, where it’s available for streaming).  Next week is The Searchers.  As always, follow along on our iCheckMovies list, and be sure to let us know how you’d rank the movies in the comments below.

Man With a Movie Camera – January 8, 1929

Director: Dziga Vertov
Writers: Dziga Vertov
Cinematography: Mikhail Kaufman

The course of the conversation:

We actually watched a silent movie we said we’d watch.

Nathaniel makes a reference from The Ring.  Jonathan doesn’t get it.

Michael quotes Nietzsche and stares into the abyss.

Jonathan is still processing.

Let’s define our terms.

Scare quotes!

A movie doesn’t need to protest to be political.

The movie has an agenda, but it feels subtle.

So much of the movie feels modern, but at the time, Vertov put out a month-long disclaimer to warn the audience that things were going to get weird.

The host’s lack of knowledge becomes an issue with understanding this film.

Quentin Tarantino would love this movie.

Appreciation for this film may be lost as we lose the physical process of moviemaking.

Live birth, side-boob, front-boob, dancing crawfish.

These are just people, living their lives, and how would that have appeared to people afraid of the Commies?

Is this movie sugar-coating Stalinist Russia, or successfully giving a taste of a day-in-the-life despite what bad things might’ve been going on?

From a social point of view, we’re glad this movie exists.

Nathaniel made his decision easily.  Michael had trouble, but didn’t rank it high.  Jonathan feels there’s a lot of technique to deconstruct and learn from.

Your hosts announce their next movie, The Searchers, with confidence, because they’re pulling a double-feature week.

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Better show notes will be forthcoming.  For now, know that we talked about A Valley Without Wind, Fish Out of Water, Disgaea 4, Eador: Masters of the Broken World, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, and what we think about cloning video games.

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The Lady Eve this week.  Next week is Living Russia (also The Man with a Camera, or Chelovek s kino-apparatom).  As always, follow along on our iCheckMovies list, and be sure to let us know how you’d rank the movies in the comments below.

The Lady Eve – February 25, 1941

Director: Preston Sturges
Producer: Paul Jones, Buddy G. DeSylvia
Writers: Preston Sturges
Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda
Distributor: Paramount Pictures

The course of the conversation:

The guys have difficulty getting into this conversation, blame the chicken.

Michael gets deep.

Just what is screwball comedy?

They might as well just call it testicular torsion.

Clever casting reveals more character details than you’d think.

Clever writing reveals more intimacy than any amount of nudity.

Barbara Stanwyck is a lioness stalking a slab of beef.

Somehow Jonathan brings in violence in video games.

Jonathan impersonates Hitler in neither Swedish nor German.

“Who’s John?” “Romeo’s sister.” “Wait, what?”

An honest rube is a somehow better than conning a con.

Should screwball comedies be on the list?

Is the screwball comedy the revival of “women’s films”?

Nathaniel’s not quite sure why he likes The Awful Truth so much more than The Lady Eve.

When Michael says a movie’s going to stay somewhere on his list? Don’t believe him.

Jonathan continues to lose touch with why Finding Nemo is so high on his list.

The hosts contribute their own movies to the list: Moon, 12 Angry Men, and The Blues Brothers.

Jonathan feels weird about Roger Ebert’s passing.

Living Russia is not a depressing movie at all.  Ignore everything Jonathan says.

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Alex starts the show with a plea to potential terrorists.

The guys have decided to quit living in sin.

Monaco will be purchased on 360, when it’s finally released.

The word “Edge” is now no longer trademarked.

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified was only hinted at when we recorded the show.

Alex picked up Playstation Plus, Malicious, Disgaea 3, Sins of a Solar Empire, and Midway Arcade Classics.

Sam has finished Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, and Resident Evil 6, and has given up on a 1999 run through Bioshock Infinite.

Jonathan’s playing Don’t Starve, Darksidersed Revengeance, and gets to talk about Ridiculous Fishing but not Fish Out of Water.

The Metagame is tabled for a while, as Sam is clearly the Prognosticator Extraordinaire, and also the guys aren’t giving the game the attention it needs to actually be interesting.

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On the Waterfront this week.  Next week is The Lady Eve.  As always, follow along on our iCheckMovies list, and be sure to let us know how you’d rank the movies in the comments below.

On the Waterfront – July 28, 1954

Director: Elia Kazan
Producer: Sam Spiegel
Writers: Budd Schulberg
Actors: Marlon Brando, Eva Marie Saint, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb
Distributor: Columbia Pictures

The course of the conversation:

Jonathan’s biggest exposure to Brando.

We’re going to be adults about the boobs.

Nathaniel dislikes modern Oscar fodder.

Ripped from the headlines!

Parallels can be drawn to Elia Kazan’s testimony in front of HUAC, but probably not enough to spend too much time on it.

Jonathan has a terrible memory.

The difficulty of making the movie.

Nathaniel doesn’t know if he would have made that decision.

Mark Wahlberg would be Terry Malloy in a modern-day remake.

We go into the priest.

The priest is the only one who could play the moral compass in this story.

Edie is the one who forces Terry to act.

The redemption of America.

Lee J. Cobb plays reprehensible so damn well.

Nathaniel is terrified of Gene Hackman.

It’s the little ones you’ve gotta worry about.

Eva Marie Saint gives a good performance, up until the script lets her down.

In our theoretical, modern-day remake, Edie would hopefully get a fuller character.

John Turturro is not John Leguizamo.

We’re glad that On the Waterfront came so quickly after Raging Bull.

The juxtaposition of the “Charlie” scene in On the Waterfront and the “Charlie” scene in Raging Bull is genius.

Context is everything.

Leonard Bernstein’s score was so overwhelming.  And not in a good way.

The drama button and Skrillex.  Either might be better.

Dear Internet: Please give us a version of this movie without the weird sound decisions.

Score-writing guy.

Jonathan and Nathaniel place the movie high on their lists, but it’s Michael who has a surprising casualty.

Jonathan manages to screw up the closing of this show, too.  It’s like a disease or something.

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The Producer & The Moose review…

Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Mac

Developer: Irrational Games

Publisher: 2K Games

Genre: 1st Person Shooter

Rating:

• The Producer: Buy It
• The Moose: Rent It

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The Third Man this week.  Next week is On the Waterfront.  As always, follow along on our iCheckMovies list, and be sure to let us know how you’d rank the movies in the comments below.

The Third Man – September 2, 1949

Director: Carol Reed
Producer: Carol Reed, Alexander Korda, David O. Selznick
Writers: Graham Greene
Actors: Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard
Distributor: British Lion Films

The course of the conversation:

Yeah, we didn’t watch Napoleon, again.  Keep an eye on the show notes.

Jonathan talks about business for a bit.

Jonathan also gives a history lesson about the Production Code.

All that talk about the code?  The Third Man is foreign and has nothing to do with it.

It’s another first for Jonathan.  Maybe.

All zither, all the time.

Nathaniel doesn’t like that he only connected with Anna. Michael and Jonathan argue that that’s the point.

Some movies needed to be watched a second time. This might be one of those.

Bruce Willis is not dead.

It’s not quite mustache twirling…

Never work with animals or small children.

We abandon any attempts at structure.

Unnecessary salacious trivia time!

Turns out, we’ve already watched a David O. Selsnick film.

There’s plenty of clever touches in this movie.

Noir is not a genre of trench coats and jazz bars; noir is a genre of it’s time.

There was an end, but no resolution.

We bust out the list.

I don’t really like this movie.  Oh wait, I really like this movie.

Michael makes a fairly easy choice.  Nathaniel and Jonathan make all sorts of changes.

Life is a message board, and firsts have been claimed.

Nathaniel’s third choice for his movie to include will shock you.

Michael picks a movie that’s gonna require a bigger boat.

Jonathan picked three movies, hedging his bet against someone taking one, and no one took any of them.

The guys moon over Moon.

Marlo Brando is De Niro’s tender side?  What?

De Niro Tenders.

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