Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Edward's June 2016 Mix






Been busy with the new job, a lot of overtime, and still learning things everyday. Sometimes it’s relatively easy, and sometimes it’s overwhelming. But I like it; I’m just not crazy about the long night hours. I had a nice little weekend visit from my oldest daughter this month. I got to hang out at a local brew pub with both my daughters. Their company under a star filled sky, the taste of a tall oatmeal stout. It will be a memory not soon forgotten.

 

1.      Robin Hood on Blu Ray: I sound like a broken record when I say Ridley Scott is my favorite director. I knew with him at the helm this was going to be a good movie. And I wasn’t disappointed in the least. Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett were superb in their roles, and this is without a doubt the best story of the Robin Hood Legend I’ve ever seen. The picture was pristine in Blu Ray. Unfortunately, I had some troubles with the sound. Old English was used for the dialogue and I just couldn’t understand it. Many of the lines were soft spoken. I had to resort to putting on the closed captions. I wasn’t alone in this. My parents watched the movie with me and they had similar difficulties making out the dialogue. The costuming, verisimilitude and Crowe’s portrayal of “Robin of the Hood,” were spot on. If you like medieval history then this belongs on your video shelf.

 
2.      A Fistful of Dollars on DVD: Sergio Leone completely revitalized the American western with this film (with some help from music composer Ennio Morricone.) Little did we know it would spawn two sequels (including my favorite western of all time, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. Casting Clint Eastwood as “the man with no name,” gave birth to arguably, the world’s first anti-hero. Not to mention, when I first saw this as a kid I thought Eastwood’s character was the epitome of coolness. I thought he was the coolest character in any and all fiction, and to this day I wish The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly had a sequel. I would love to have known what ultimately happened to “Blondie,” and Tuco Ramirez. Clint was fresh from his role as Rowdy on the television series, Rawhide so there was a bit of a transition from his likeable cowboy character to the squinty eyed man of few words he became in later westerns. This wasn’t Leone’s best, but it’s not one to be missed.
 

3.      Ryan Adams: Rock N’ Roll on CD: I first picked this up back in 2003 when it first came out upon hearing “Burning Photographs” on the radio. When I discovered I had lost the CD a few weeks ago I instantly reordered this one from Amazon. This underrated album is on par with other one man type balladeers such as Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, and Bryan Adams. Every song is edgy, buzzy, and shows off Adams’ wonderful talent in his riff creation. If you’re curious, give his “Burning Photographs” a listen on YouTube, or check out the whole album on Spotify. “Rock N’ Roll” is also a gem, sad and personal. You can tell Adams wrote it about something that must have affected him deeply at some point in his life. I think you’ll be wonderfully surprised. Over the years, Adams has assisted in producing several major acts, and the man himself has made fourteen studio albums. He is a force.

 
4.      Sanford & Son: The Complete Series Season Two on DVD: This show was only surpassed in popularity in its heyday by Norman Lear’s other creation, All in the Family. The show knocked The Brady Bunch off the air and as a kid was the first sitcom that drew my attention to grown up television. I actually looked forward to watching it on Friday nights. The show is racier by today’s standards, which is a good thing if you hate our new sanitized political correctness zeitgeist. This box set is remastered in HD, and noticeably so in the first season. Unfortunately, I don’t think the second season handled the transfer as well. It just looks grainier and rougher than I remember the first season looking. At any rate, this is 1970’s comedic television at its finest.
 

5.      Tripwire: Jack Reacher #3 by Lee Child: I’m currently engrossed in Lee Child’s third novel about the man’s man, Jack Reacher, ex Army Military Policeman and savior of the day. This time we find Reacher down in Key West, Florida digging swimming pools by hand since the alleyways and roads are too narrow to get heavy construction in. He unexpectedly finds a private investigator on his trail. And then suddenly the PI is murdered. Reacher retraces the investigator’s trail back to New York where Reacher finds himself involved in a different type of pool this time, a pool of loan sharks out for blood. The book presents one of the most interesting villains I’ve encountered in a long time, the kingpin loan shark, an avaricious man whose hand he lost in Vietnam and has been replaced by a steel hook  he uses as a weapon. Jack Reacher is a man of great stature (he stands 6’5”) and in this engaging novel he exudes as much intelligence as he does cold hard brawn.
 

6.      Silent Storm by JoWood Games on PC: Ragdoll physics, real world weapon authenticity (circa 1943), full 3 dimensional mapping with complete environmental damage. When this game came out in 2003 it had it all, long before games even thought to implement some of  these now standard features. After beating Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts I decided to tackle this one. It’s quite difficult; it reminds me of 1997’s Jagged Alliance which is my favorite turn based strategy game of all time. This game got great reviews back when it came out. I was overjoyed to see it pop up on Steam.
  

7.      Radiohead: A Moon Shaped Pool on CD: When I first heard Radiohead’s song that propelled them into popularity, “Creep,” I dismissed the band altogether. I hated the song, and the radio seemed to play it constantly. And then, like so many of my favorite CDs in my collection, I was driving to work one night and I heard “Let it Down” on the radio. It was love at first listen. I went out later that week and bought the whole album, OK Computer. And a short time later the album swept the grammies in 1996. Many audiophiles called it one of the best albums of all time to come out of the 1990’s. I couldn’t agree more. And then in the early oughts, I picked up Kid A. I liked it. I liked how each song seemed to be an experiment in sound. It was if Thom Yorke said, “Let’s just see how different we can sound with each song.” I liked it, as I said, but I think OK Computer was their magnum opus. And there is this new release I just acquired, thanks be to my wonderful daughter remembering me on Father’s Day. The band has definitely matured, and they haven’t strayed from being experimental. “Daydreaming” has one of the most plaintive and beautifully haunting openings in a song I’ve heard since Harold Budd/Brian Eno’s heartbreakingly sad “Late October.” (Look it up, and try to listen to it without your eyes welling over. I defy you.) A Moon Shaped Pool didn’t quite captivate me like OK Computer, but it’s been on auto repeat in my CD player, and the album is growing on me.  
 

8.      Gone Girl  on Blu Ray: This movie really caught me off-guard. Ben Affleck returns home one morning after running errands in the local small town to find his wife has vanished ostensibly through foul play. We want to like Affleck’s character, he’s charismatic, and he seems wholly credible. You can even see the police detective assigned to the case wanting so much to believe him. His alibi seems airtight, but things occur throughout the movie to make you think he’s not as credible as you want him to be. And this is presented in a great way in which we begin to shed our disbelief much the same time as the detective. It’s a great screenplay, though one character/subplot I found rather contrived. I have many people who talk about how bad of an actor Affleck is, but honestly, I’m not seeing it. I think he hit a homerun with this one.

 
9.      Steam Summer Sale 2016: I’ve picked up two games so far, but like the past few Steam sales, this one is underwhelming. I think I even described the last sale with that same lame word. Yet, there is no better way to describe it. I’m glad the silly games are gone, the games that compelled you to play to earn Steam trade cards, but there are no more flash sales, and I have most of what I want anyway, but perhaps the biggest slam is the fact the games aren’t going down in price all that much. I’m still compelled to look at the sales each day, but I think the glory days of Steam’s Summer Sales are behind us.