The Keep by F. Paul Wilson (2006)
Author F. Paul Wilson has always been vitriolic regarding the 1983 film version of his novel. “Visually intriguing, but otherwise utterly incomprehensible” is one of his more sedate quotes. Michael Mann’s adaptation of the 1981 bestseller is a curiosity in itself, which I will not discuss at great length here. Suffice to say that I may write an extended piece on its troubled history and many versions, at some point in the future. In 2006 F. Paul Wilson scripted a graphic novel version of his book with artwork drawn by Matthew Dow Smith, of Hellboy fame. In the foreword F. Paul Wilson states “I consider this visual presentation of The Keep my version of the movie, what could have been... what should have been.”
Uninstalling Games
I’ve recently started reclaiming space on my hard drive and have subsequently started a gaming purge. Contemporary games are often very large and it doesn’t take long for a few titles to monopolise your storage capacity. As fickle gamers we can fall out of love with a game very quickly making these large client installations redundant. It’s a curious thing but the entire process of removing a game from your PC is quite therapeutic. It can be similar to bidding a fond farewell to a dear friend, or wiping some offending matter from the sole of your shoe. It all comes down to how you feel about the game in question.
Rediscovering Comics and Graphic Novels
As a child I avidly read comics during the seventies. I had a subscription to several titles and use to enjoy having them delivered. I purchased both US and UK titles and would trade old copies with friends. I wasn’t a collector or purists, I just loved what I read and in some respects that lead me on to discover other genres of fiction. However comics fell by the wayside when I hit my teens. I have no memory of there being any specific reason for this. It was simply a case of one pastime being replaced by another. I think music became more important to me and my reading moved on to classic horror and sci-fi literature.
Shaolin Soccer (2001)
Stephen Chow’s Shaolin Soccer is very much a product of the culture and regional film industry that created it. An established comedian from Hong Kong, he puts an interesting spin on the traditional rags to riches sports movie genre! It is liberally laced with a lot of visual slapstick and showcases some aspects of Chinese humour that may confuse and wrong foot the average westerner. This film is also a treat for the film buff, as Chow has included numerous homages to classics martial arts movies, which are often referred to in a very tongue in-cheek fashion.
MMO Loyalty
I was toying with the idea logging in to The Secret World today. There’s been a lot of internet chatter about the game of late, mainly due to Funcom’s ongoing woes. I was smitten with a mixture of nostalgia regarding the game, especially the quality of its storytelling. Just for a fraction of a second I felt bad for not having played for a long time and even considered my current liking for other MMOs to be disloyal. However I quickly realised that such thinking is nonsensical and was reminded of the old adage about time being a finite quantity. The fact remains that you cannot play everything you’d like to. However I’m sure I’m not alone in having such thoughts and it got me thinking about the entire subject of MMO loyalty.
The Land That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1924)
The Land That Time Forgot is the first part of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Caspak” trilogy of science fantasy novels. Commencing as a wartime sea adventure, hence its original working title of The Lost U-Boat, Burroughs’ story ultimately develops into a saga with similarities to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World and Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island. What makes Burroughs work unique is his plot device of a biological system specific to his island, in which the slow progress of evolution manifests itself as individual metamorphosis. This biological feature is only implied in The Land That Time Forgot and explored in greater depth over the course of the next two novels, The People That Time Forgot and Out of Time’s Abyss.
Gaming and Unemployment
During my working life the job market has changed substantially. The concept of a job for life has been seriously eroded as has the sense of job stability. At present in the UK it is still very much an “employers market” and recruitment is definitely conducted on their terms. Periods of unemployment have therefore become increasingly common in comparison to my parent’s generation. I personally have endured times when contracts where not forthcoming and recollect 2009 and 2010 being particularly tough years. Although looking for work fills a lot of the time when unemployed, there is still a substantial void to fill. Unemployment also leaves you without a daily routine and clearly any defined goal to achieve. It is therefore not surprising that so many people fill these gaps by turning to gaming.
MMO Economies
One of the greatest assets of Star Trek Online is its single shard server technology. Not only does this foster a great sense of community but it provides several logistical benefits. The most practical of these is the in-game auction house known as the Exchange, which due to the games server structure offers a universal and comprehensive market place. If it can be sold within the game then it’s usually available on the Exchange. Like any market it is driven by supply and demand and fluctuates accordingly. The Delta Recruitment event in May saw a rise in both the availability and price of low level items. The recent announcement regarding the Admiralty system has seen the prices of Mirror Universe ships increase tenfold.
The Haunter of the Ring and Other Tales by Robert E. Howard (1925-36)
Robert E. Howard’s collective literary work is often overshadowed by his most famous character, Conan the Cimmerian. As with Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, the success of a single creation can lead to subsequent material being overlooked or discounted. This can be a dilemma for many a popular author. Fortunately we live in an age where the back catalogue of many a writer is now freely available and lesser known work is re-evaluated. The publisher Wordsworth has recently compiled a collection of Howard’s short stories that squarely fall in to this category. Like his more popular work, the anthology The Haunter of the Ring and Other Tales focuses on the supernatural, the fantastic and baroque.
LOTRO Update 17 Beta
Since the launch of Update 16 in May this year, I and many other LOTRO players have been standing on the cliffs of South Ithilien, looking across the River Anduin to Minas Tirith. It’s been a long and hard journey over the last eight years but finally players will be able to visit that iconic city in Update 17. At present a beta build is available on the Bullroarer test server, so I spent several hours over the weekend exploring the Pelennor Fields and the surrounding area known as Old Anorien. The city itself has numerous placeholder NPCs and it is clear that some textures and additional details are missing from the environment. However the essential layout and design of Minas Tirith is obviously set and as ever Turbine have done an interesting job interpreting Tolkien’s source text.
Play Dirty (1969)
Gritty, grim and fatalistic are just a few of the ways I would describe Play Dirty. Made at a time when cinema was becoming more realistic and cynical, it eschews the traditional depiction of World War II heroism and paints a singularly unglamorous picture. Due to some minor plot similarities, it is frequently compared to The Dirty Dozen but they are far from identical movies. Robert Aldrich’s film despite having an offbeat plot and a cast of quality characters actors still followed a traditional action based formula and had a relatively upbeat ending. Play Dirty is content to pursue its dour storyline to its inevitable conclusion.
Star Trek: The Animated Series
Star Trek: The Animated Series (or TAS) is often overlooked by the public, getting lost among all the whites noise that accompanies the franchise. Yet it is a surprisingly good series with a distinguished writing pedigree. The series was produced by Filmation in association with Paramount Television and ran for two seasons from 1973 to 1974 on NBC. A total of twenty-two half-hour episodes were produced set in the same timeline and universe as the original series. Often characters and situations that had featured in the live action show re-appeared and where expanded upon, such as Harry Mudd, the Guardian of Forever and of course Tribbles.
The Martian (2015)
Within a few minutes of watching Ridley Scott’s big budget adaptation of Andy Weir’s best-selling novel The Martian, it became immediately apparent that the emphasis was on dialogue and science. Naturally there are competent action sequences of the magnitude you’d expect from such a movie but they are not the driving force of the narrative. The Martian is very much a procedural drama with strong and likeable characters. It’s about how they react to adversity and the underlying mechanics of solving the logistical problems of rescuing a man marooned on Mars. If you don’t like movies with a lot of dialogue and having to think too hard then you may wish to see something else.
LOTRO World Transfers
This evening I successfully transferred my two primary LOTRO characters from Gilrain server to Laurelin. The process was intuitive and took about an hour in total. Considering this was mid-evening and therefore UK gaming primetime, I thought this to be an acceptable timeframe. I had no issues with any of the contents of my personal bags or vault and was refunded all the rent that I had paid in advance for my house. I took the opportunity brought about by the move to downsize to a smaller in-game property. I was please to find that the migration of my kinship was proceeding well with many other familiar faces arriving on Laurelin during the course of the evening. So from my point of view this migration was far from a difficult experience.
Movie Trivia: The Wilhelm Scream
In the 1951 movie Distant Drums starring Gary Cooper, a small band of soldiers are crossing a swamp in pursuit of Seminole Indians. While wading through the Everglades, one unnamed soldier is attacked and dragged underwater by an alligator. His last sound is an agonised, startled scream. Two years later in The Charge at Feather River, a soldier named Private Wilhelm screamed as he’s struck by an arrow in his leg. So began the cinematic legend that is the “Wilhelm Scream”, a sound effect that has punctuated a multitude of films over six decades.
The Complete Ghost Stories of M R James – Read By David Collings (2007)
The supernatural fiction of Montague Rhodes James is a major milestone in the history of the literary ghost story. His work tangibly helped shape the genre as we know it today, focusing on classic themes such as retribution, vengeance and other aspects of traditional mythology literature. The protagonists are often socially dysfunctional intellectuals who face peril due to their excessive curiosity. The very physical nature of horror often masquerades for deeper psychological issues. They also serve as an invaluable window into the socioeconomic structure of Edwardian Britain.
White Tiger AKA Belyy Tigr (2012)
It is rewarding to find a movie that wrong-foots you and challenges your perceptions on certain subjects. White Tiger is exactly such a film. Starting of as a traditional war movie, the story quickly evolves into a supernatural revenge story with shades of Moby Dick. The final act and subsequent sting in the tail ending provides immense food for thought. It proposes an idea that many will find particularly challenging. However the film succeeds in making such a bold pitch because of its inherent Russian earnestness and the fact that that nation’s war experience is so subtly different from others.
The Enduring Appeal of Mario Kart
One of the best games I have ever played is Super Mario Kart. It simply embodies all those elements that make Nintendo titles so great. It is a polished product with a cheerful aesthetic that is eminently playable. It has exactly the right balance between skill and random chance resulting in a fun and compelling game. No two races are ever the same. It is one of the few titles that I have literally played all night with friends. I still smart over the “incident” where someone stole my feather just as I was about to jump across the shortcut on the Ghost Valley 1 track (this will make perfect sense to those who have played the game).
El Dorado (1966)
El Dorado opens with a montage of paintings by celebrated Western artists Olaf Weighorst. These beautiful pictures in many ways reflect the nature of the movie, depicting a stylised representation of the Old West that despite its beauty, never really existed. Director Howard Hawks includes every possible genre trope and meme into El Dorado but far from being a handicap, it makes the movie a perfect distillation of Hollywood Western. The pairing of John Wayne and Robert Mitchum is sublime as the two effortlessly riff off each other. If you need an example of how the Western is the most flexible and accessible movie genre, then El Dorado is a text book example.
Gold Sellers
Having returned to several MMOs recently, I have been surprised to see that gold selling is still quite common place. Purveyors of these and other dubious services still regularly spam the in-game chat channels of games such as Star Trek Online and Guild Wars 2. I would hazard a guess that games based on single server environments amplify the hawking of such wares. I have not seen such messages on the Gilrain server where I play LOTRO for several years. However it is clear that gold selling is still a “thing” within this genre, irrespective of my surprise.