Edward's October 2024 Monthly Mix

 

 Stem cell therapy was always the stuff of science fiction and fantasy for me. That was until my cardiologist encouraged me to contact the Heart Center at Cleveland, Ohio. It took me several weeks to make contact with someone, but I finally did and now I’m slated to pay them a visit in December. My cardiologist explained they probably couldn’t fix me, “but I’ve seen them do some amazing things,” he says. I guess we’ll see. In the interim, I’m putting in almost sixty-hour weeks at work which leaves little time for much of anything. I did however, manage to get a star on The Cure’s “Lovesong” and despite my free time, I was able to dabble in a few things. 

 

Lords of the Fallen on PC: I’ve talked about this delightful Dark Souls copycat before. Having killed off four bosses now, I’m beginning to see how everything comes full circle. I can look out on a vista and view some mystical looking spot in the distance. Eventually I’ll find a way to get to that spot. I’ll enter a door that was once incapable of being opened, and going through it, find that I’m in a room I’ve already been in several times, just from a different entrance. Seems I’ve just discovered a shortcut that shortens half the map! One thing I will say that this game has over Dark Souls is the color palette. Though it’s still a gloomy game, it’s so much brighter and shall I say. . . hopeful? 

 

 

Fallout on PC: First starting this game in 1999, and after four attempts, I beat it. It is with great honor I’ll be able to venture into this world from this point on, being able to state I’ve beat Fallout. As I’ve said before, it’s worth the playthrough, if just to see the origins of Deadmeat, and the Brotherhood of Steel, of which I earned my very own power armor. I got to meet the mutants and put an end to them. Admittedly, the game hasn’t aged well. The controls are wonky and the game is difficult. I used a walkthrough, but at this point I didn’t care. I just wanted to finish the game. I’ve read Fallout 2 is even bigger and more expansive. I can’t wait to check it out.  

 

The Birds on 4K Blu-Ray: Deemed, Alfred Hitchcock’s monster movie, this movie struck a chord of inspiration. Remember Richard Dreyfuss in the shark cage being rammed by the shark in Jaws? Well, you saw it first in The Birds when Tippi Hedren escapes the birds by sheltering herself in a phone booth, and the birds try to crash through to get at her. Slow pacing reigns supreme in this film, as alluded by the lack of a musical score. Bet you didn’t realize it, did you? However, you probably experienced the impending dread that prefaced each bird attack in the film because of the movie’s pace. Hitchcock does something else interesting in this movie, he shows a lot of closeups of a person’s face, particularly their eyes, and then we see what they are looking at. It has an intimate effect, creating anticipation and drawing the viewer closer to the character. But the main character in this film is the birds themselves. The birds were trained by Ray Berwick was the bird handler/trainer. It was discovered the crows were the most intelligent and the gulls were the meanest. Once trained to dive bomb humans, none of these birds could be released from captivity again.  

 

 The Reivers by William Faulkner: William Faulkner could be inferred as the 20^th Century South’s GNP. His writing clearly has more verbiage than his scribbling peers, John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway. And he sends me to the dictionary. Steinbeck and Hemingway never do. This is probably the most comical of Faulkner’s books I’ve ever read. It involves three youths in the early 1900s who “borrow” a car from one of their wealthy grandfathers and head to Memphis, Tennessee where they spend the night in a brothel and lose the car in a foolish trade for a race horse. Then they must race the horse and gamble on the race to try to win the car back. Hilarity ensues, but there is a passage towards the end involving a boy’s corporal punishment (or lack of) however, that I found poignant and moved me to tears. As per any other Faulkner novel, this one has its share of “n-words” because it's the old South, and it was a different time back then. The novel won the 1963 Pulitzer Prize.

Simcity on PC: When this game came out in 2012 it caught an unnecessary amount of flak for it’s always online requirement and its limiting real estate space to build its bespoke cities. And then Colossal Order Ltd.’s Cities Skylines dealt the killing blow to EA’s venerable city building sim. I actually enjoyed SimCity and favored it over Cities Skylines. The poppy colors and vibrant art style, and not to mention the stellar sound design put it a cut above in my opinion. Clicking on a supermarket brought with it the sounds of grocery items being scanned, someone pushing a shopping cart with a squeaky wheel, and the plaintive cries of children being denied candy at the checkout lanes. There was such an ambience to the game. I recently reinstalled and tried to play the game again, however. It had been a minute and a half, but I just couldn’t get into it. Maybe the general consensus was right; the game just needed more real estate. 

 

 

Death Race on Blu Ray: Take the idea of reality television and catapult it twenty years into the future. This is the concept of Death Race. Prisoners at a maximum security penal colony drive weapon clad vehicles in an all out race in which the winner is granted his freedom if he can survive five races. I’d never seen the 1975 David Carridine movie Death Race 2000 (but always wanted to.) Paul W. S. Anderson stated the movie was more a prequel than a clear-cut remake of the original film. With an all-star cast, the movie was filmed as a Hollywood A film and not a B film (despite Roger Corman opining treatments for the film) Also the an original idea for the film was helmed by Paramount Pictures and the Paula Wagner/Tom Cruise team. Tom Cruise did not like the first two screenplays of the film he read, so he passed on it. Jason Statham was cast as the lead, and I was not disappointed. The cars were the main stars, however, each having dedicated mechanics that worked 12-14 hour days 6 days a week to keep the cars running while filming. It’s a fun movie to watch, rough around the edges and graphic, but it will rivet your senses.

The Untouchables on 4K Blu-Ray: Could you imagine Bob Hoskins playing Al Capone in this epic gangster movie? Well, that’s how it almost happened. Brian De Palma much preferred Robert DeNiro in the role, and when DeNiro went to meet with De Palma, he thought Robert DeNiro was much too slight in his manner, softspoken and not rough enough. He was told he would be in for a big surprise when DeNiro showed up for filming. DeNiro used a heavy set body suit, and gained weight in his face and neck, and he had his hair shaved into a receding hairline, and he adopted the mannerisms and voice. He became Al Capone. Brian De Palma said DeNiro did subtle things in the film that you simply could not see behind the camera – a testament to DeNiro’s talent. The characterizations in the film were superbly done in the guise of four men (Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Andy Garcia, and Charles Martin Smith) who were totally disparate, coming together like a well-oiled machine and working to topple Al Capone and his chokehold on Prohibition era Chicago. The soundtrack created by Ennio Morricone (who won a Grammy for his work on the film, produced the theme song that Paramount still uses today to present preview trailers on their home media. Metacritic summed up the movie perfectly: Slick on the surface, but loaded with artful details. De Palma was going for a clean and pristine look like Nazi Germany. This really shows in the 4K transfer.

 

Edward's September 2024 Monthly Mix

 

 

 September has become my favorite month and it’s not because it’s the month of my birth. I think it’s because it heralds the coming of autumn. When I was young, May was my month of choice because it announced the arrival of spring and my inevitable follies that only befall the youth. Now that I’m old, and I have more days behind me than ahead, there’s a certain chill vibe to autumn that I embrace more deeply and it’s deepening with each passing year. Unfortunately, like Robert Frost’s poem, “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” autumn is always fleeting which gives rise to winter, which is an altogether different story.  

 

Company of Heroes 2 on PC: You’ve heard me say it before, Company of Heroes is one of my all time truly favorite games. Were I to be banished to some beautiful tropical island with funky umbrella laden drinks and vacation worthy sunsets, and broadband Internet of course, I’d have a copy of Company of Heroes on a killer gaming laptop at all times. In the interim, I’ve been spending time with Company of Heroes 2. I beat the campaign sometime last year, but I’ve been busying myself with the game’s pre-packaged scenarios. Offering three levels of difficulty, Conscript, Captain, and General. Most of these missions are just impossible, let alone trying to play them on General difficulty. But I want those Steam achievements! Anyway, I shall stay the course, at least until I get to the end of the missions. And let’s not forget that stellar soundtrack helmed by Cris Velasco, an American musician who has done everything from God of War to Borderlands 2 to The Long Dark. Filled with operatic haunting male chorus and philharmonic grand orchestras, it’s a soundtrack fitting for a Hollywood feature film.

Mission Impossible: Season 5 on DVD: There were some changes made in season five of this venerable television series, and I’m embracing them all. Lesley Ann Warren has joined the cast as Dana Lambert, a vivacious young agent, with a charm and beauty not unlike the typical girl next door. Sam Elliot (who looks almost strange without his trademark Tombstone moustache) has also joined the Impossible Mission Force. The theme song has a subtle variant, which admittedly, makes me long for the previous theme song style. Shows are introducing more elements of missions involving mafia kingpins and organized crime.

Dell Alienware 34” Ultra Widescreen monitor: As all of my gaming buddies know, acquisition of this bright, beautiful monitor is proof I’m in no hurry to upgrade to 5K resolution. This monitor had been on my wishlist for a long time. I’ve always moved up in computerdom over the years from 640 x 480 to 1024 to 1650 to 1080p, and then I discovered 1440p. It truly is the sweet spot for PC gaming. This monitor being ultrawide and curved, I thought would take some getting used to. It was more like a sense of homecoming when I plugged it in. If you’ve been thinking about takin the plunge into curved, I recommend doing so.  

 Psycho on 4K Blu-Ray: Alfred Hitchcock never cared subject matter or acting. He cared about photography, and the pieces of film that could do something to an audience. And this movie did something to me when I first watched it at 8 or 9 years old. I realized it made an impression on me like a fingerprint tattoo. John Carpenter said this movie was a piece of American history and you can see how movies are made today because of this movie. I’ve seen it numerous times over the years, and picked up the Blu Ray edition when it first released. This new 4K edition was the gamechanger, however, and not for the reason you’re thinking it is. The movie was filmed in black & white, so there isn’t much resolution-wise you can do to improve it. The improvement in this edition comes with a different (and very noticeable) upgrade. The sound! Sound is often overlooked, but in a movie, dialogue is where the story lives, Effects are where the action of the film lives, and music is where all of the emotion lives. In the original film when the policeman who’s been following Marion Crane tails her to a used car dealership where she trades her car in to avoid suspicion for her criminal act, the cop can be seen standing across the four lane street, leaning against his car with his arms crossed. You see cars passing in front of the camera and the sound of their passing is a single monotonic whoosh. The painstaking sound remastering in this 4K edition really comes through when you now hear the cars pass from your left speaker through the center channel and then out of your right speakers. This effect about made my mouth drop open. This newly released version is testament to the old adage, “just when you thought it couldn’t be improved upon.”  

Eternity Eau de Toilette by Calvin Klein: You know me, spicy fruitiness colognes in the warm months and musky leathery man scents in the autumn and winter. Seeing as how fall is approaching, I decided to try Eternity. It’s proved its worth, having been around since 1990. It offers up the masculine smell of barbershops and lemon. I like its tenacity. A few sprays seem to last all day long. The scent though, maybe not so much. It’s an old cologne, and it smells like it. It kind of made me miss my Drakkar Noir, but that said, Eternity ranks number 18 according to Yahoo!’s poll of the 25 top colognes that women love on men. Maybe I’ll keep it around.

Railroad Corporation on PC: Railroad economic strategy games are some of my favorite games on the planet. (I’ve played through Sid Meier’s Railroads! five times.) I’m always searching for the next iteration of Sid Meier’s Railroad Tycoon 3, but by the looks of it, there will never be one. I have found something almost as fun though. Enter Iceberg Interactive’s Railroad Corporation. It takes itself a bit more seriously, graphics-wise than 2006’s Sid Meier’s Railroads! And in this game, rather than owning a railroad, you control a railroad for robber barons. If your job isn’t up to par, you’re fired and it’s game over. I had attempted this game a few years ago, but lost interest due to its complexity. I made the decision to give it another go, however, and so far, it’s been pretty fun. I’m on mission 8 of 12, so it seems I’m doing okay since there are no difficulty levels - - it’s one size fits all.

 

Edward's August 2024 Monthly Mix

 

 

 

August flew by like a Pegasus. But I'm getting into the routine of my new department at work, and it's with smooth sails and fair winds. The guitar playing is coming along steadily. I'm working on The Cure's "Lovesong" which is a mix of everything guitar. I have some unusual chords, some nice little mini solos going on, and as usual per The Cure, a melody that is happy with lugubrious lyrics. In the world of The Cure, it rains every day. To avoid all of this melancholy I turned to bright and shiny things like good movies, good reading and some really great games. 

 

Lords of the Fallen on PC: When Dark Souls released in 2011, it heralded in a new genre of games, so impactful the genre even called itself, Souls-like, an obvious allusion to the game’s incredible difficulty. I even joke around with the guys I work with explaining, “There are two types of people in the world, those who have beat Dark souls, and those who haven’t. And guess what, guys? I’m one who has!” The Souls formula is simple, but compelling. One starts out as the typical RPG “chosen one,” a level 1 nobody, and you fight things and loot things, all the while building up attributes to take on extremely difficult boss fights in an attempt to level your statistics even more. The first major copycat out of the gate was Deck13’s Lords of the Fallen. Critics christened it the first “souls-like.” It is, albeit with a difficulty considered easier and much more of a storyline complete with talking NPCs. Not to mention, your player character, Harkyn, has much more personality than the desiccated husk of a being you played in Dark Souls. I’ve got almost three dozen hours in the game, and admittedly, it is a struggle. It’s giving my Xbox controller a good workout, and after beating this one (if I do) I’ll be taking a break from another souls-like game for a long while simply because they are so exhausting. 

 

 

Rear Window on 4K Blu-Ray: I recently picked up a box, make that a “book” set of Alfred Hitchcock films on 4K. This first set contained four Hitchcock movies (perhaps his four most well known among the masses.) I wasn’t expecting these films to be so glorious looking as remastered 4K versions. The first movie I watched was Rear Window. It concerns a freelance photographer, played by James Stewart, who is convalescing in his small New York apartment with a broken leg. Confined to a wheelchair, he has little to do but stare out of his windows at the other tenants’ windows, in effect, becoming a voyeur of sorts. His curiosity gets him deep into hot water, however, when he thinks he sees one of the tenants murder his wife and proceed to remove her from the small apartment in little pieces. The movie is a testament to Hitchcock’s ingenuity as a director. The whole film is from the viewpoint of the photographer’s apartment. The movie is a suspense tour de force, and I can now say with confidence it has become my favorite Alfred Hitchcock movie. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie: I probably read about this book, the beginning of a trilogy somewhere on my GoodReads site. It’s a medieval fantasy in the vein of A Song of Fire and Ice, without the heft.  The story begins with the misadventures of a young barbarian named Logen Ninefingers, who always has to explain his name by holding up his injured hand, revealing the origin of his name. We are then introduced to a bevy of memorable characters who consistently walk a smudged gray area of good and bad. Abercrombe’s dialogue amongst the characters is great laugh out loud stuff. (And I rarely find comedy funny.)

Vertigo on 4K Blu-Ray: This was the second feature I watched on the Alfred Hitchcock box set I picked up this month. Considered by critics and film historians as Alfred’s masterpiece,  (I personally think that honor should go to North by Northwest.) This movie, another James Stewart vehicle, involves a detective hired by an old college friend to follow his mentally unstable wife as she leaves the house and embarks on mysterious adventures. Virtuous Jimmy Stewart falls in love with the wife, however, and from that point on things really become an imbroglio. Stewart’s character, who is deathly afraid of heights, suddenly realizes he has bit off way more than he can chew. Hitchcock visited San Francisco once and deemed it, “The Paris of North America.” He knew at that point he wanted to film a movie there. The film’s restoration was incredibly painstaking, and the end result as you can see in these stills are easily worth the price of admission for this set.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Digital Photography Essentials by Tom Ang: I piecemealed this book a bit at a time for over a year until I completed it. I quite frankly think it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read on the subject of photography. This book starts out with the assumption you know the basic fundamentals, how aperture and shutters work in cameras and you know a little of what lies beyond the all too familiar Auto button on the camera, but then it takes you by the hand and introduces so many aspects in getting the most use out of your digital camera. The book was copyrighted in 2011, so a miniscule amount of the book might be dated, but were there to be a revised edition, this would be the perfect book to have if you are interested in blowing the dust off your camera and using it as a new window to the world. I generally give my books away after I read them, but this one just might be a keeper.  

The Fellowship of the Ring on Blu-Ray: Oddly, I’d not seen this movie since its theatrical release in 2001. I remember I hadn’t read the books, so immediately before the film released, I gobbled down the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and then proceeded to see the first film with my friend, Vic Berwick. I wasn’t impressed. As a matter of fact, Vic still makes me laugh recounting the two of us in the darkened theater and when he looked over, I was asleep! Perhaps the source material (the books) was too new in my head still. I’m not sure. But seeing this movie again after all these years, I forgot how grandiose it was. The transfer to Blu-Ray is excellent and projects wonderfully on a 4K TV with a good soundbar. Containing a (mostly) all star cast, this was the beginning of one of the most involved film projects of all time. (All three films in the trilogy were filmed sequentially in New Zealand and filming took fourteen months.) 

 

 

Fallout on PC: Here I am again with another attempt. This makes start number four on a game that’s always haunted me that I never finished it. It is an important game after all, credited with renewing the spark of interest for computer role playing games when it released in 1997. Previously, I would get stuck and say, Okay, I’m done with it. And then I’d uninstall it out of anger and frustration. This time I’m using a walkthrough and I have everything set to wimpy and easy. I just want to finish the game. Of course, the inspiration behind this is Amazon’s Prime excellent series, which isn’t wholly true to the game, but it’s true enough. I’ve made good progress in this. I’ve at least saved Vault 13 by procuring the water chip. It’s been said this is when the real adventuring begins. From what I skimmed ahead with the walkthrough, it looks like I’m a good third of the way through the game. (It’s not that long of a game.) The game deserves a special shout out to Mark Morgan who composed the eerie but oh so fitting soundtrack to the game.

Without Remorse (John Clark #1) by Tom Clancy: I read Clancy’s Rainbow Six when it was first published in 1998. It released in close proximity to the stellar game put out by Red Storm Entertainment. I remember enjoying the book immensely as well as the game. I didn’t realize at the time, Rainbow Six was a John Clark #2 novel because the main character, John Clark, had been in a previous Tom Clancy novel. I’ve read several of Clancy’s books, but not in any particular order. (I suggest you read The Hunt for Red October. Now!) Without Remorse really shows that Tom Clancy wasn’t just a hack who wrote techno thrillers for men; the guy really could write great entertaining fiction. This book has elements of Stallone’s Rambo, Charles Bronson’s Death Wish, and even elements of Peter Benchley’s Jaws in it. It’s a fun read.

Alien: Romulus at IMAX: It was on par with the first two Alien movies, and as it turns out, the movie occurs between the first and second Alien movies. Peculiarities I thought that were just that, peculiarities, were the space station the kids found they were going to use to abandon their mining planet. Hard to believe it was just hanging there all along like a ripened apple, just out of reach. And then the way the xenomorphs evolved from facehuggers to fully grown walking terrors in such a short amount of time. David Jonsson, who played the broken android, did a remarkable job. The movie made strong allusions to Alien:Isolation, one of my favorite games of all time. If you’re a fan of the first two movies, this one belongs in your collection.

 

 

Edward's July 2024 Mix

 

 

 

July was a hot month. Summer vacation ended for me, but I went back to a different department. New faces and new responsibilities. I’m already feeling a reduction in stress. I’ve been playing guitar with a buddy, my first time to play with someone else. It’s much more fun than I ever imagined. But this heat! Sheesh! If something good comes out of everything, then this heat is a good thing. I get a free pass to stay inside and indulge myself in good movies, games, music and books!

 

Battlefield 2042 on PC: I amassed over 2,400 hours in Battlefield 2 almost two decades ago. I still daydream about the maps in that game that seemed like real places because I invested so much time there. I enjoyed Battlefield 3, but really it made me miss Battlefield 2. Then for whatever reason, EA started releasing multiple Battlefield games. It got hard to keep up with them. I was done. Or so I thought. I ended up picking up Battlefield 2042 after it went so cheap on a Steam sale. It’s definitely a battlefield game for the new generation. The maps are gorgeous and the gunplay is fun. I enjoyed the single player campaign. The servers are highly populated (who’s to say for however long, since EA eventually shoots them down.)

Terminator 3 on Blu-Ray: I’m a fan of the Terminator series and always have been. I have this on DVD which is a good rendition of the movie. Watching it on Blu Ray opened up a whole new way of looking at it. The transfer is crisp with its amazing bombastic audio track and a new generation of CGI effects created by Industrial Light and Magic. Complications involving the film’s rights and ownership precluded any interest by James Cameran to helm the director’s chair. Arnold (who commanded a $30 million payday for the film was reluctant to do the film without Cameron directing, but per Cameron’s encouragement to star in the film, he proceeded. I forgot how really good this particular film is. The chase scenes and the fight scenes between Schwarzenegger and the newer T-X female Terminator make the movie well worth watching.  

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 on Steam: I read Tom Clancy’s venerable Rainbow Six immediately when it came out in 1998 and was elated to watch it become a very good video game series. I’ve enjoyed them all through the years. . . with the exception of this one. Released in 2008, the game got favorable reviews. I don’t see how. It’s an 8 hour game that took me 30 hours to beat. The final boss took me 33 attempts to beat. The AI had sniper abilities using pistols and always knew where I was. This wasn’t uncommon in shooters in the mid aughts. I’m glad game technology has moved on from this.

Live Aid (1985) on DVD: I’m on disc 3 (of 4) of this wonderful time machine. Highlights for me was seeing Duran Duran perfom. Coming out of the New Romantics era of post punk England, this band help put synth-pop on the map, and boy did they! Simon Le Bon’s stage presence is magnetizing, not to mention John Taylor, of which I can unabashedly state is one of the most handsome men I’ve seen. Furthermore, his prowess on the bass leads me to believe he’s one of the best bass players I’ve ever heard. And then there’s John Taylor whose guitar chops are to be heard to be believed. Madonna was another highlight. Wearing flower print denim jeans and a brassy and black pair of Wayfarer sunglasses, she didn’t miss a beat. She came out with two dancers and moved over the stage like an ocean tide moving forward and recessing with her perfect body. This was a month before her marriage to Sean Penn. She was clearly exuding happiness through her very pores onstage. Seeing The Cars perform was another grand highlight. The guitarist, Elliot Easton, a fellow lefty is a guitarist after my own heart. I was 22 when this concert actually was live and watching this will forever make me feel as if I’ve stolen a jar of something special from a time capsule, unscrewed it and peeked inside.

National Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton, Ohio: A mere two hours from Indianapolis in Dayton, OH is home to over 350 aircraft and spacecraft all housed in four massive hangars. I’d heard much about this place and how it was not to be missed. We made this a family outing and included walk throughs of Air Force One presidential planes (formerly employed), spacecraft that landed on the moon, and a genuine moon rock! There were numerous World War One and World War Two planes (many of them replicas so convincingly real you won’t be able to tell the difference), and a complete cockpit of a Space Shuttle. I walked an estimated four miles touring the museum and got to see everything. Admission was free and there’s not even a charge for parking. Talk about a bang for your buck! 

 

 

Déjà vu on DVD: Tony Scott, brother of Ridley Scott (my favorite director) has a knack for filming bold and gritty movies that have more busy-ness in them than the pages of a Richard Scarry’s BusyTown children’s book. Denzel Washington has starred in several of his films, and together, the duo has made some of my favorite movies. This film, basically a sci-fi, thriller, crime drama revolves around time travel to prevent a catastrophic crime before it can happen. Denzel Washington and Val Kilmer team up in this one. Surprisingly, James Caviezel plays a bad guy who was partially based on American terrorist, Timothy McVeigh. This was Tony Scott’s last film which is really unfortunate because he was such a good director.

Chess: I learned this ancient game in my high school library when I was about 13 years old. The game is almost a life skill, like riding a bicycle. You don’t forget once you learn to play. Getting good, however, that can be a lifelong struggle. Watching The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix last month rekindled a burnt piece of kindling for my interest in chess. I picked up a few refresher books this past month and picked up a really cool looking USCF tourney chess set. We’ll see how it goes.  

In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Gabor Mate, MD: This book is a study of addiction: the causes, the repercussions, the real costs, etc. Gabor Mate has an unusual but interesting take on the whole realm of addiction. He believes genes have nothing to do with it. According to him, all addictions come from abuse or neglect from childhood. It’s a great search to fill a void. He boldly challenges the failed War on Drugs, suggesting a holistic, constructive set of solutions. He asks his patients what the high from heroin feels like, and many of them say it’s as if a “warm wet blanket” were placed lovingly around their shoulders. He claims that says it all right there. Filling the void.

 

Edward's June 2025 Monthly Mix

 

This June begins my summer shutdown from work and includes a bevy of wonderful things, the Steam Summer Sale, anyone? I just made a move at work, albeit for the better. I think this will mesh better with my personality. I’m going back to the land of production control, to a world of  OEMs and new old stock. I’ve been returning to study an old passion of mine: chess, the game of kings. (Thank you, Netflix!)  

 

System Shock on PC: After making the switch to the new PC, I had to reinstall this all over again to play it. Unfortunately (but then maybe not so unfortunately) Nightdive updated and patched the game so much, I had to start all over again. Fortuitously, the old adage, “If I could just go back in time, knowing what I know now,” actually works in the world of PC gaming (if only we could use it in RL!). So, I’m getting close to where I left off when I first started playing it. This is still a game that upon donning a set of cans, cutting the lights, and cranking the volume up, washes into a dreamy neon cyber existence in another world. There’s no handholding or guideposts here. Welcome to gaming in the early 1990s. 

                                                               

 

Some Kind of Wonderful on Blu-Ray: John Hughes knew the world of a teenager perhaps better than any other filmmaker in existence. And this particular movie has always been near and dear to my heart. The theme song, “Turn to the Sky” by the March Violets has been my ring tone for over a decade. This was Eric Stoltz at his best, coming fresh off Mask with Cher. And this is the movie that developed my forever crush on Mary Stuart Masterson. With Leah Thompson in the casting as well, this was a perfect vehicle for John Hughes. A big shoutout should go out to my sister, Lisa Nogelmeier for turning my attentions to this movie in the first place.

Tropico 5 on Steam: I’ve tried to tackle this game multiple times. It’s fun, but so overtly difficult I finally had to give up and uninstall it. Doh! Playing as a South American dictator started out being a blast, but having people constantly revolt, and not having any direction as to what to do next. I’ve always been part purist and part masochist. I will trudge on through a game come hell or high water to get it beat. I have to face the fact there are some games simply impossible (for me.) Tropico 5 was one such game. Time to move on!

Anno 1800 on Steam:  And move on, I did. I bought the deluxe version of this game when it came out. It’s a beautiful city builder, taking place in the early 1800s. Imagine a lavish child’s playset made of shiny brass and silver. That’s what this game is. The water looks pristine, and the waves crashing against shore look as if you have a little piece of the ocean in your computer. The wood details on the ships are amazing looking, and the ambient fauna and foliage add to the whole artificial but realistic environment. It’s on sale on Steam for the summer event at an incredibly reduced price right now, too.

The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix: I am and always have been late to the party. I finally watched this, or rather binge watched it with Mrs. Burton. Even though she has no knowledge of the game of chess (and has no desire to learn it) she found the series as compelling as I did. This awakened in me a whole new rekindling of my desire to play the game, especially when I saw that Bruce Pandolfini (who coached real life chess grandmaster Josh Waitzkin who you remember from the movie, Searching for Bobby Fischer) was a consultant to the movie. Taking place in the 1960s and 1970s this movie had no clear-cut anachronisms. The style of everything, the environment, the cars, the soundtrack (especially) was spot on.

The Searchers on Blu Ray: A grandiose John Ford western in the truest sense. The sweeping sets in glorious VistaVision were commonplace in the 1950s and this film is a testament to how amazing these films look. The film was a critical and commercial success. Since its release, it has come to be considered a masterpiece and one of the greatest and most influential films ever made. It was named the greatest American Western by the American Film Institute in 2008, and it placed 12th on the same organization's 2007 list of the 100 greatest American movies of all time. Entertainment Weekly also named it the best Western. The British Film Institute's Sight & Sound magazine ranked it as the seventh-best film of all time based on a 2012 international survey of film critics and in 2008, the French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma ranked The Searchers number 10 in their list of the 100 best films ever made. In 1989, The Searchers was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress, and selected for preservation in its National Film Registry; it was one of the first 25 films selected for the registry. 

                                                         

 

Assetto Corsa Competizione on Steam: Probably the “prettiest” racing game I’ve ever had grace my computer, this concentrates on the GT3 Racing Series, and boy howdy does it! I had played it before, but again, this is a game that once I reinstalled it on my new rig, my saves were wiped. I had to start over again. Fortunately, I was only 15% of the way through it, heh, so not much was lost. After two races in career mode, I’m already past it. These cars are low slung, ground hugging tornadoes, and driving one is like riding a tamed rodeo bull.