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Category Archives: Entertainment
Quid Pro Quo
Dirk and I have an Arrangement: I lend him comics I think he might like, and he lends me comics he thinks I might like.
It works out well: I got to introduce him to Transmetropolitan, The Red Star, and PS238, while he’s exposed me to Barry Ween, Powers, and, most recently, Wake.
Powers, with its tendency to leave you feeling like you caught the middle part of a three-part episode, can frequently be maddening, but for sheer inventiveness and visual panache, there’s no topping it. Plus, periodically an arc like “Forever” comes down the pike, and you suddenly realize the payoff for having endured six trade paperbacks’ worth of sometimes-disjointed storylines.
Wake, meanwhile, is distinctly French, insofar as it’s about a vast nomadic fleet of spacecraft crewed by a multitude of races, many of whom seem intent upon sleeping with each other. Still, it’s entertaining, even if you have trouble deciding at times whether you want to see the heroine triumphant, or just bitch-slapped.
But I digress. One wrinkle in the Arrangement is that each of us is responsible for acquiring subsequent volumes in “his” series, regardless of how eager the other might be to read it. Thus it was that the other day, Dirk informed me, “The third Red Star trade paperback is out. You need to get it, so I can read it.”
If you’ve never seen The Red Star before, it’s something of a revelation. The series’s hallmark is the seamless blending of hand-drawn characters with stunningly-detailed CGI sets. In the skilled hands of its creators, it works astoundingly well. The result is, essentially, hardcore porn for geeks, something so visually lush that it probably defied printing technology just a few years ago.
The newest volume, “Prison of Souls”, brings the protagonists to the brink of a climactic battle with their enemy’s champion. Dirk has it now; when he’s done with it, I’ll be unleashing it upon Bill.
Hero
Whoof. I’m not sure what I walked into the theater expecting. A martial-arts movie with above-average production values, most likely. Certainly not what I got, right between the eyes: an epic tragedy with larger-than-life characters, sacrifices, and visuals.
The word that kept coming into my head as I watched was “beautiful”. Beautiful sets. Beautiful costumes. Beautiful actors. Beautiful movement. Beautiful music. Beautiful cinematography.
There is nothing about this movie that is not a feast for the senses, but its use of color, so central to the way the story is told that it’s almost a character in its own right, deserves special mention. Most movies could be desaturated down to black and white without much loss of substance, but not this one. You’d do less damage — although, admittedly, not much — completely muting the soundtrack instead.
Is it a perfect movie? No. It bogs down a bit in seeming repetition toward the end. (Or, as Paul said afterward, “Waitaminute, didn’t we kill these guys four times already?”) Also, it’s at least as Wuxia as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, with which it will inevitably be compared, so if the sight of two master swordsmen engaging in a duel while they skip like stones across the surface of a lake causes you suspension-of-disbelief problems, this is probably not the movie for you. Lastly, it’s subtitled, but if that’s a problem for you, you need to see a doctor. Philistine.
How to Torture an Idiot
Tell him that there is now a locked copy of Half-Life 2 sitting on his machine, inches away from his itching hands, and that he’ll be able to unlock it… Real Soon Now. (It’s just as well, I suppose. This gives me a chance to dig the registration number I got from ATI out of the disaster that is my office filing system, and thereby avoid feeling like a completely different and more acute class of idiot.)
The Fine Line, Pt. II
Well, chalk up two more points in the “wanker” column. I just ordered these:
Huh. I just noticed that the Elites have two opposable thumbs per hand, one on each side. Nice. I never caught that in the game, but then I suppose I was too busy trying to shoot them in the head to pay much attention to their hands.
The Fine Line
There is a fine line between “enthusiast” and “wanker” — and I seem to do my level best to skate a wavy path alongst it. Case in point: my “friend” Alex made me aware of the MonsterGecko PistolMouse FPS the other day.
At first glance, it looks like a cheesy gimmick devised mainly for the purpose of separating gullible wannabe badasses from their money. Closer inspection, however, reveals disquieting signs that actual thought, care, and attention went into its design. For instance, one of the drawbacks of regular mice for games is the placement of the scroll wheel: either you move your index finger off the primary mouse button to use it, or you manipulate it with your less-dextrous middle finger. (No comments from the peanut gallery, please: my middle finger is more than up to the task of dealing with the likes of you.)
MonsterGecko’s design puts each control under its own finger, with the scroll wheel under the strongest and most nimble digit, the thumb. In addition, they’ve placed the optical sensor far forward, so that a little yawing of the wrist will let you rotate your view to one side or another. Finally, the triggers, at least, are made of anodized aluminum. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that I seem to have a crow-like fascination for the stuff lately, this further belies the notion that this thing was slapped together to make a quick buck. True shysters would have used the cheapest plastic they could find and had done with it.
So, of course, I had to order one. We’ll see whether this makes me a wanker or a badass in mid-September, when it’s supposed to ship.
(No, wait, it’s official. I’m definitely a wanker. Otherwise I’d have ordered mine from ThinkGeek, who actually have them in stock. Damn.)