Jacob Heayes 🎮🎥✒️

hell yes!!!

Birthday twins! Happy neigh-day to you and all those lucky souls at EGX about to experience this demo and have their life irrevocably changed.

Shadow of the Colossus: 20 years on, this Playstation classic still looms large Released in 2005, Team Ico’s seismic adventure, in which you scale and slay gargantuan beasts, subverted genre conventions and reignited the conversation around the artistic merit of video games

New for BFI: As Shadow of the Colossus turns 20, a few words on its seismic impact, its contributions to the eternal 'games as art' debate and naturally, Adam Sandler.

www.bfi.org.uk/features/sha...

Agnes (Jessie Buckley) and William (Paul Mescal) face each other in a lush woodland environment.

HAMNET is impossible to review in a calm manner; the screening was introduced by Steven Spielberg with a guided meditation by Chloé Zhao. Either way, this is a wonderful film. Primordial and pastoral with an exquisite sense of stillness. Pathos as healing tincture. Art as a reckoning. #LFF

Roman (Dylan O'Brien) and Dennis (James Sweeney) stand side-to-side dressed as Sims.

TWINLESS is the biggest fest surprise so far. Entered with modest expectations, left feeling electric. Ostensibly a twee Sundance dramedy, Sweeney's moving and mischievous tale quickly diverges into bizarre, psychosexual territory. Clever, complex and led by a phenomenal Dylan O'Brien. #LFF

Emma Stone's character Michelle Fuller - bald and covered in white antihistamine cream - looks at a character off-screen.

BUGONIA is another twist of the knife by Yorgos Lanthimos. Restrained by his standards (until it isn't), the film adopts a suffocating theatricality to its staging/score/performances. Stone and Plemons' rapport is magnetic. Robbie Ryan's career-best compositions take no prisoners. #LFF

A woman - silhouetted - gazes over a balcony, set to a backdrop of raindrops illuminated by a striking red glow.

Bi Gan's monumental elegy to cinema RESURRECTION is my current fave of the year. A truncation of 20th-century China via a symphonic collection of film genres, Gan once again displays his masterful craftsmanship. Another oner for the ages. Special nod to the surprise (sob-inducing) M83 score #LFF

Dialogue choice in Mario Galaxy with two options: "that's right" and "yes"

Much like Kentucky Route Zero, your dialogue choices in Mario Galaxy 2 don't affect the path of the story but they change your understanding of the character

Also attended a last-min screening of BAD APPLES: a wickedly deviant comedy with (an ever-excellent) Saoirse Ronan. There's a lot of absurdity, wish fulfilment and catharsis - particularly if an unruly child has ever sabotaged your day. It's all utterly ridiculous but weirdly satisfying. #LFF

Kicking off #LFF with a video game adaptation - what a time to be alive. EXIT 8 is a jolting, deliriously enjoyable translation of the original, nailing the liminality and the inexplicably addictive rhythms of its mechanics. Somehow wrests a moving morality tale out of the plotless source too.

The spirit of THE CURSE is alive and well in THE SMASHING MACHINE. I'd wager around a fifth of this film is spent watching UFC matches; conversely, at least half is focused on The Rock and Emily Blunt awkwardly interacting in their living room.

Art and alternative games for the discerning palate, it's Indiepocalypse #69!

-10 curated games for $15!
-Zine!
-Newly commissioned game by
@deimosly.itch.io
-Cover by @abbycali-art.bsky.social

pizzapranks.itch.io/indiepocalypse-69

All that being said, the skins look very slick!

Not to be cynical but K-Pop Demon Hunters does feel like the first ever ready-made Fortnite film. Transmedia compatibility > everything else in the production process.

Messenger It's a small planet, but someone's gotta make the deliveries.

Got round to Messenger. I am actually a little spellbound that all of that can squeeze into a humble browser tab. Arcane dev wizardry going on there. messenger.abeto.co

Genre-defining title and it's only now leaving Early Access. Don't pass this one up folks, cheery December vibes guaranteed.

Will There Ever Be Another You by Patricia Lockwood: 9780593718551 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2025 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, USA TODAY, VULTURE, ROLLING STONE, W MAGAZINE, AND MORE “Lockwood has written a roving chronicle of the madness...

my new book is OUT TODAY! it’s been described as "the writer at her best: mystified, curious, pathetic, absurd" — you can buy it here

Forever baffling.

Redford's passing is inevitably a seismic loss for all cinema; he is that rare specimen of icon we often (mistakenly) attribute to others but seldom witness in our lifetime. For those keen to delve into his extensive filmography, I'd highly recommend his sweepingly sincere Lowery collaborations.

They're going to cast Sydney Sweeney as Rosalina, aren't they

Blue Spring

Sometimes, I just levitate thinking about every instance in which INDUSTRY has needle-dropped this: open.spotify.com/track/2Cy3ID...

frothing at the mouth

YouTube video by ZL Productions Stuntman Ignition All Film Director Fail Quotes

Most of the fail one-liners from Stuntman: Ignition tbh but *especially* anything involving lava.

youtu.be/ZizovC_l4a0?...

In chronological order (of screening): Exit 8, Resurrection, Bugonia, Twinless, Hamnet, Little Amelie, Sirat, If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, Silent Friend, Wake Up Dead Man, Rental Family

Every film I've got booked currently for LFF this year. Some corkers inbound, I'm sure.

Got excited all for nothing thinking a weaving rhythm game had dropped. smh

Playnist aims to be the Goodreads for games For many, tracking the media they consume has become an intrinsic ritual.

Always up for more players in the tracking space. Communities and niches are - in my eyes - best equipped to navigate the stormy tides of discoverability, so any platform that specifically leverages that is worth keeping an eye on.

www.gamesindustry.biz/playnist-aim...

The LFF programme is now up and I'd be remiss not to immediately spotlight the thriving IMAX Games Lounge. My personal recommendation this year would be the elegiac and moving Some Goodbyes We Made, my absolute A Maze highlight.

Just under a month left on the deadline for submissions on our fantastical Sidney Sime / Games Art exhibition ✨

Agreed. The final image & the conclusion of the activism arc speaks volumes as to what's really on Aster's mind. It's a more engaging film taken at a psychological rather than a political level. Fair to say it's a cleaner film than Beau, but I got far more from the surrealist comedy there.