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Reviews
Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven (2002)
9/10
Yes, this is an awesome game. I hope you decided to buy it. I want this company making more games like this one.
Great graphics, voice acting straight from actors from Goodfellas and the Sopranos (those Czechs were smart to get top-quality voice acting), atmospheric music you can listen to for the entire game and not get sick of.
The physics used in the way the cars and weapons work is really top notch - totally realistic. The AI was very good. The storyline is the best I've seen in an action game (and I've been playing them for years). This was a really polished product.
There are a few things people might not like: a linear plot, your game is saved automatically at points throughout the mission, but you can't autosave yourself. These things hardly bothered me at all, because I got sucked into the story, and the autosaves were frequent enough at logical locations.
The Birth of a Nation (1915)
paradox when an intellectual idiot is a cinematic genius
(This may have some spoiler stuff in it, but I'd be surprised if anyone saw this film without knowing all about it already.)
We can thank D.W. Griffith for creating film as an art form, for maturing the medium. However, Birth of a Nation did far more damage than good as a film. Although it is the first true American feature film, feature films were inevitable anyway. All of the innovations used in the film had already been used in Griffith's previous films and would continue to be used. It cannot be said that Birth of a Nation was socially acceptable in 1915. It drew immediate demonstrations against its racism, condemnation by the American president and Congress, and was banned in 8 states. It is directly responsible for the rise of the KKK in many parts of the South, and was used as a recruitment film for the KKK until the 1960s. It is sad that such an unfortunate story (how the KKK saved white women from rape, forced marriage and other atrocities perpetrated by black "monkeymen" after the end of the Civil War) accompanied this feature film. However, you cannot separate the story from this film. To do so would be to ignore the damage this film has caused in U.S. society - damage that is still felt today. That would be irresponsible.