bluegargantua (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bluegargantua) wrote2013-06-01 03:35 pm
bluegargantua) wrote2013-06-01 03:35 pm
Entry tags:
A Fortnight of Reviews
Hey,
Oh LJ, I'm falling down on posting to you. Let's put that to rights, shall we? Herein I talk about the various media I've consumed over the last fortnight.
Movies
I've seen two. First was The Painting (their website is down at the moment). This is an animated French film dubbed into English. It's really quite good, sort of an artistic Toy Story. You have this painting done up in this colorful, slightly abstracted style wherein live the All-Dones, the Half-Dones and the Sketches. The Painter has been away for some time and the All-Dones figure he's never coming back and wouldn't now be a good time to rid themselves of the incomplete people in their picture. One of the All-Dones, Ramo, is in love with a Half-Done. He, along with Half-Done Lola and a Sketch named Plume find their way out of the painting and into the artist's studio where they move from painting to painting trying to track down their creator and get some help.
It was a fun little movie. There was a fairly dense amount of story going on for an animated film and the style was a refreshing change of pace from Pixar-like precision. Sadly it's not playing locally anymore but it's worth hunting around for.
This past week I saw Furious 6, the latest installment in the Vin Diesel franchise. It's trying hard to draw the threads of it's previous movies together to create a sort of Fast and Furious-verse where punk street racers are the world's most successful thieves. It's not high art, but this movie knows exactly what it wants to be and it's exactly what it wants to be as hard as it can. So I call this a pretty good movie.
How good is this movie? Normally, if a film makes me go "wait a minute, how is X even possible?" that's the sign of a bad movie. I should be so engrossed in the film that the flaws don't hit me until afterward. In this movie, there is a huge problem with the final set piece of the film and I couldn't stop thinking about it...and I just didn't care. Fast cars, punch ups, heists, the movie just piles it all on like a Thanksgiving dinner of action movie. Oh, and the main bad guy doesn't rely on being captured by the good guys to show off how smart he is/complete his fiendish design. Sure, his plan has a lot of terrible flaws, but at least being captured isn't a vital part of it.
Video Games
I've been playing way too much Borderlands 2. I don't know why I like this stupid game so much. Kill things, take their stuff, level up so you can kill tougher things and take their better stuff -- ok, so maybe it's self-evident why I like this game so much. But exploring the different character types means I'm playing through the same content again and again....and then I'm playing through it again on super-hard mode to level up my guys and gain funky new powers.
There's been a bunch of DLC, but the new gameplay content gets blown through very quickly. There's one final DLC to drop and it involves one of my favorite NPCs so I'm back at the grind, but seriously.
Board Games
There was a game called Glory to Rome that had a reputation as a fantastic game with terrible artwork. There was a kickstarter to produce a new version with better art that I backed. This turned into a minor shit-storm as the guys running the kickstarter were swamped by their success and poor post-funding management. The kickstarter ended in August 2011, they announced a Christmas delivery and I think I got my copy in Oct/Nov of 2012. There were failures but I think it was compounded by backers who expected too much from a kickstarter and made the whole thing worse.
Anyway, I got my copy and I got to play it last week. Glory to Rome is a card game where you try score victory points through completing buildings, stashing away valuable materials and a few other ways. Each card can be used as a building, an action, a raw material, or victory points depending on when you play it and where you play it from. There's a lot to take in. My poor girlfriend was hopelessly confused (we were playing in a high-distraction zone).
Her trouble with the rules did not stop her from beating me. I came in dead last in a four player game. There are a lot of things you can do and many paths to victory. I got caught up in building buildings so I built buildings that gave me advantages to building more buildings. But I wasn't stocking my vault with VPs so by the time my build-all-the-buildings strategy started to kick in the game was over and I had nothing.
I'm totally ready to get in a few more rounds of this.
Books
My usual stomping ground.
I did not finish The Age of Scorpio by Gavin Smith. It had a lot of promise from the blurb and I ordered it from the UK and...it was a letdown. I was expecting sci-fi, but I got sci-fi, fantasy Celtic, modern-day occultish-si-fi in three interleaving stories that left me cold after a few chapters.
So then it was on to Love Among the Particles by Norman Lock. This is a collection of Mr. Lock's short stories and the first few were much stronger than the end. Early stories about an interview with Mr. Hyde or a mummy travelling to New York to consult on the film of his life are quite good. After that, the stories get kind of same-y. In particular, the titular story could replace several others since it all covers the same ground.
After that it was time for Hello America by J. G. Ballard. The novel is set in the future after the energy crisis of the 70's never got any better as world oil ran out. American's fled their country to re-settle in European enclaves. A dam built over the Bearing Strait changed ocean currents and turned everything east of the Rockies into desert and everything west into rainforest.
The book follows a small expedition that sets out to investigate unusual seismic and radiological signals coming from the continent. It's supposed to be a quick look around before returning home but the exploration team is made up of American descendants and all of them have their own dreams for the New World.
So yeah, the book has a lot of problems on a factual point of view, but it's not that kind of book and as the Great American Wastelands test the members of the team (in particular, a stowaway named Wayne), it's a look at what drove Americans in the past and even today (accounting for the fact that the book is almost 30-years old). A fun read.
Oh, and I also read through Relish: My Life in the Kitchen by Lucy Knisley. This is an autobiographical comic about Ms. Knisley and her relationship to food and her family. She was raised by foodies in a family of foodies and that has shaped a lot of her experiences. She's far from being snotty about her food (indeed she really loves junk food -- partially because it pissed off her parents and mostly because it's tasty) and covers a lot of ground through the lens of food.
She also includes wonderfully illustrated recipes for the foods she loves from pickles to fried mushrooms to sushi to shepherd's pie. Each recipe gets a 2-4 page spread and they're all very enticing. Indeed my girlfriend made the fried mushrooms and they came out astonishing well. I'd kind of like to see her do a whole cookbook this way.
So...yeah, that's what I've been consuming lately. The little dudes are coming along as well. Actually, it's the little buildings in this case. Hopefully there will be a post (sooner than a fortnight from now) where I can show off what I've been putting together.
later
Tom
Oh LJ, I'm falling down on posting to you. Let's put that to rights, shall we? Herein I talk about the various media I've consumed over the last fortnight.
I've seen two. First was The Painting (their website is down at the moment). This is an animated French film dubbed into English. It's really quite good, sort of an artistic Toy Story. You have this painting done up in this colorful, slightly abstracted style wherein live the All-Dones, the Half-Dones and the Sketches. The Painter has been away for some time and the All-Dones figure he's never coming back and wouldn't now be a good time to rid themselves of the incomplete people in their picture. One of the All-Dones, Ramo, is in love with a Half-Done. He, along with Half-Done Lola and a Sketch named Plume find their way out of the painting and into the artist's studio where they move from painting to painting trying to track down their creator and get some help.
It was a fun little movie. There was a fairly dense amount of story going on for an animated film and the style was a refreshing change of pace from Pixar-like precision. Sadly it's not playing locally anymore but it's worth hunting around for.
This past week I saw Furious 6, the latest installment in the Vin Diesel franchise. It's trying hard to draw the threads of it's previous movies together to create a sort of Fast and Furious-verse where punk street racers are the world's most successful thieves. It's not high art, but this movie knows exactly what it wants to be and it's exactly what it wants to be as hard as it can. So I call this a pretty good movie.
How good is this movie? Normally, if a film makes me go "wait a minute, how is X even possible?" that's the sign of a bad movie. I should be so engrossed in the film that the flaws don't hit me until afterward. In this movie, there is a huge problem with the final set piece of the film and I couldn't stop thinking about it...and I just didn't care. Fast cars, punch ups, heists, the movie just piles it all on like a Thanksgiving dinner of action movie. Oh, and the main bad guy doesn't rely on being captured by the good guys to show off how smart he is/complete his fiendish design. Sure, his plan has a lot of terrible flaws, but at least being captured isn't a vital part of it.
I've been playing way too much Borderlands 2. I don't know why I like this stupid game so much. Kill things, take their stuff, level up so you can kill tougher things and take their better stuff -- ok, so maybe it's self-evident why I like this game so much. But exploring the different character types means I'm playing through the same content again and again....and then I'm playing through it again on super-hard mode to level up my guys and gain funky new powers.
There's been a bunch of DLC, but the new gameplay content gets blown through very quickly. There's one final DLC to drop and it involves one of my favorite NPCs so I'm back at the grind, but seriously.
There was a game called Glory to Rome that had a reputation as a fantastic game with terrible artwork. There was a kickstarter to produce a new version with better art that I backed. This turned into a minor shit-storm as the guys running the kickstarter were swamped by their success and poor post-funding management. The kickstarter ended in August 2011, they announced a Christmas delivery and I think I got my copy in Oct/Nov of 2012. There were failures but I think it was compounded by backers who expected too much from a kickstarter and made the whole thing worse.
Anyway, I got my copy and I got to play it last week. Glory to Rome is a card game where you try score victory points through completing buildings, stashing away valuable materials and a few other ways. Each card can be used as a building, an action, a raw material, or victory points depending on when you play it and where you play it from. There's a lot to take in. My poor girlfriend was hopelessly confused (we were playing in a high-distraction zone).
Her trouble with the rules did not stop her from beating me. I came in dead last in a four player game. There are a lot of things you can do and many paths to victory. I got caught up in building buildings so I built buildings that gave me advantages to building more buildings. But I wasn't stocking my vault with VPs so by the time my build-all-the-buildings strategy started to kick in the game was over and I had nothing.
I'm totally ready to get in a few more rounds of this.
My usual stomping ground.
I did not finish The Age of Scorpio by Gavin Smith. It had a lot of promise from the blurb and I ordered it from the UK and...it was a letdown. I was expecting sci-fi, but I got sci-fi, fantasy Celtic, modern-day occultish-si-fi in three interleaving stories that left me cold after a few chapters.
So then it was on to Love Among the Particles by Norman Lock. This is a collection of Mr. Lock's short stories and the first few were much stronger than the end. Early stories about an interview with Mr. Hyde or a mummy travelling to New York to consult on the film of his life are quite good. After that, the stories get kind of same-y. In particular, the titular story could replace several others since it all covers the same ground.
After that it was time for Hello America by J. G. Ballard. The novel is set in the future after the energy crisis of the 70's never got any better as world oil ran out. American's fled their country to re-settle in European enclaves. A dam built over the Bearing Strait changed ocean currents and turned everything east of the Rockies into desert and everything west into rainforest.
The book follows a small expedition that sets out to investigate unusual seismic and radiological signals coming from the continent. It's supposed to be a quick look around before returning home but the exploration team is made up of American descendants and all of them have their own dreams for the New World.
So yeah, the book has a lot of problems on a factual point of view, but it's not that kind of book and as the Great American Wastelands test the members of the team (in particular, a stowaway named Wayne), it's a look at what drove Americans in the past and even today (accounting for the fact that the book is almost 30-years old). A fun read.
Oh, and I also read through Relish: My Life in the Kitchen by Lucy Knisley. This is an autobiographical comic about Ms. Knisley and her relationship to food and her family. She was raised by foodies in a family of foodies and that has shaped a lot of her experiences. She's far from being snotty about her food (indeed she really loves junk food -- partially because it pissed off her parents and mostly because it's tasty) and covers a lot of ground through the lens of food.
She also includes wonderfully illustrated recipes for the foods she loves from pickles to fried mushrooms to sushi to shepherd's pie. Each recipe gets a 2-4 page spread and they're all very enticing. Indeed my girlfriend made the fried mushrooms and they came out astonishing well. I'd kind of like to see her do a whole cookbook this way.
So...yeah, that's what I've been consuming lately. The little dudes are coming along as well. Actually, it's the little buildings in this case. Hopefully there will be a post (sooner than a fortnight from now) where I can show off what I've been putting together.
later
Tom