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.
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