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A "cut scene" is a sequence in a video game over which the player has no control, often breaking up the gameplay and used to advance the plot, present character development, and provide background information, atmosphere, dialogue and clues.

Cut scenes use animated and/or live-action footage. Blizzard Entertainment has a department created especially for making cinema-quality cut scenes for games like Warcraft.

If Blizzard had released "Warcraft: Spartans and Persians," after you won the game, it would play the movie "300" as a cut scene.

And they would have done it better.

For me, most romantic films make false, insincere statements about love and relationships. In contrast, Lost in Translation (2003) is painful in its honesty and candor. It asks brave questions about love and intimacy.

Lost in Translation (2003) is a progressive example of a "Stealth Chick Movie", a term on Internet postings for a film that a guy would enjoy seeing on his own, but takes his girlfriend or wife because it'll make him look sensitive. The oldest use I found for this term was for Muriel's Wedding (1994).

There is a similar theme that seems to have a lot to do with the remarkable guy-friendliness of these two films: these aren't the typical romantic stories that provide an example of love and relationships. Instead, both explore love and relationships as concepts, asking thought-provoking questions about what love is and is not, what does and doesn't qualify as a relationship.

Lost in Translation (2003) depicts a contemporary, not-quite-improper relationship among two people for whom such a psuedorelationship seems to be what they need and want. I won't be more specific for fear of spoiling the film.

I will say that this film depicts a two people reinventing the who-what-when-where-why-how of intimacy and relationships, an underexplored topic in film, presented with brave realism and sincerity by director Sofia Coppola.

"Home Movies" is a timeless show about kids making movies. The writer, producer and director of the show also provide the voices of the principal characters, kids who make movies down in the basement.

Normally this insular arrangement would make for a claustrophobic or emotionally unrealistic program, but this show is built by people who seem to genuinely like each other and connect creatively. This do-it-yourself quality is reflected in the script, characterizations, and animation style, and is a recurring moral theme in the program.

This homemade organic intimacy presents the show as its own complete world, where kids are fed, loved and left alone to create things and occasionally give advice to adults. Twenty years from now, I'll be showing "Home Movies" to my grandkids.