In his review of the new Max Payne movie, which he pans like everyone else, Moore writes "But as good as a couple of its action beats are, Max still suffers from the heartlessness that makes games emotionally inferior to movies. Nobody ever shed a tear over a video-game character's death."

Oh, Roger. A simple Google search for "I cried when Aeris died" shows just how wrong you are. Even I... have a friend whose tear ducts were fit to blow near the end of Shadow of the Colossus. Shit on Max Payne 'til your heart's content, but realize we're a sensitive lot. *sniff*

Movie review: Max Payne — 2 out of 5 stars [Orlando Sentinel - thanks, Dylan!]

Ben Fritz has an interesting column up over on Variety that points out that comparing a movie to a video game is quickly becoming a shorthand way of saying it sucks.

For today's movie critics, videogames are the new MTV musicvideo, a shorthand insult for any movie deemed too heavy on effects and visual panache at the expense of plot and coherence.

Anyone who has spent much time playing videogames — a category in which, it seems safe to assume, few established film critics fall — knows the comparison is both artistically demeaning and substantively wrong.

Fritz than launches into a defense of video games, pointing out that not all games are mindless gore-fests, sure some are, but it's absurd to bunch them all under one umbrella and about as fair as "dismissing the art of moviemaking based on "Wild Hogs.""

I think this increasingly wide-spread insult in movie reviews is mostly a product of pop culture ignorance and a sign that some movie critics are becoming increasingly detached from the mass culture they should be so versed in. Brian Crecente

300 Critics Cling to Consoles [Variety]

Developers don't just hate game reviews, they hate game reviewers too. But hey, I hate most game reviews as well, no big whoop. While my reasons are different, here's why the developer loathe critics:

• The games are played only for a few hours.
• The specific audience isn't understood.
• The game's genre isn't respected.
• Reviewers have no clue about development.

The article goes on to list ways that game journos can improve and how developers can help. While their haterade is founded, the problem is more in format and execution. Like with anything, there are great reviewers, and there are bad ones. And the above reasons aren't the only reasons to blame. Brian Ashcraft

More Here [GameDaily] via Press The Buttons

We posted this weekend about the opening weekend box office success of Silent Hill despite the critical panning the film received. What I find even more interesting though is the wide discrepency between fan reviews of the movie and critic reviews of it.

The New York Times gave the movie a 10 out of a 100 and the San Francisco Chronicle gave it a bit fat zero, but according to sites like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, fans seemed to like it.

Metacritic
Critics: 29 percent
Users: 88 percent

Rotten Tomatoes:
Critics: 29 percent
Users: 75 percent

So is this a case of fanboyism or critics not getting it?

Moviegoers Really Like Silent Hill and Silent Hill is Worth Seeing