Spider-man: Homecoming: Another in the long list of passable and entertaining but ultimately unimportant Marvel movies. Tobey Maguire set the standard for the Spider-man role in 2002 and 2004; Tom Holland doesn't quite live up to that standard, but he does a decent job. Tom's Peter Parker is more child-like and less complex, a flat two-dimensional comic character compared to Tobey's rich and conflicted adolescent, but that is more to do with this movie's director and team of Marvel-assembled writers (six of them) versus the better director and single author of the earlier movies.
Slightly better is Michael Keaton's Vulture villain, who steals the screen every time he's around. With a little more character development - some more family time or father-daughter bonding - he could have been one of Marvel's rare, fully-fleshed characters. He gets awful close. I almost cared about him. As for everyone else, they are occasionally funny or emotive but ultimately one-dimensional plot points to serve as backdrop.
The plot works well within the movie, but not quite as well within the Marvel continuity: Vulture is collecting the energy materials left behind after The Avengers and selling them on the black market (we here about the sales, but not much about the effect of these sales). Peter is 15 years old, but jazzed up after having been called to be part of the incredibly dangerous fight against Captain America in Captain America: Civil War, and now thinks of himself as interning for Iron Man in the hopes of being made a full avenger. Iron Man wants him to just stick to his local neighborhood until he gets older - which doesn't make much sense, since he called him up to fight Captain America, for goodness sake. Of course, Peter encounters Vulture and tries to prove himself, takes a beating, earns Iron Man's wrath, gets his gun and badge taken away, but decides to solve the case on his own (excuse me, I seem to have mixed this movie up with every cop movie, ever).
The special effects are hum-drum for this kind of movie. In particular I don't like Peter's "suit", which is basically a copy of Iron Man's (given to him by Iron Man) with computer vision, a talking computer, etc etc. It doesn't have Iron Man's armor, but that doesn't seem to matter, since Spidey is invulnerable to any kind of punishment (like every other damn superhero), so he is basically Iron Man light. If there's one thing that makes a superhero movie good, it's when the hero's powers and surrounding characters are limited and markedly different from the other ones'. This movie fails in this regard, big time.
But, continuity and unoriginality aside, there is nothing else remarkably wrong with the movie. The contained plot flows, some scenes are tense, some are ridiculous (I'm sorry, but holding a boat together after it is split into two parts won't stop it from sinking). The scenes where Spider-man and Vulture encounter each other out of costume and each comes to realize who the other one is are done well.
Roughly on par with Captain America: Winter Soldier.
The Beautiful Fantastic: A deliberately quirky movie, pleasant and enjoyable, not too deep. Imagine the heroine of Amelie with a less challenging set of obstacles to overcome.
Bella (Jessica Brown Findlay) is a librarian and an aspiring children's author who lives in a small flat where she is responsible for keeping up the garden, but doesn't. She is faced with eviction unless she overhauls the garden by herself in thirty days. She is too poor to pay anyone (how she acquires and pays for the supplies is not dealt with). The cantankerous old, possibly ill widower next door neighbor is the one who ratted on her. This widower employs a gay (gayish?) young cook, Vernon, but treats him poorly, so the cook quits and decides to cook for Bella instead, who can't pay him, but somehow the widower continues to pay him and Vernon continues to cook for the widower so long as he doesn't have to deal with him on a daily basis. The widower eventually gives Bella a little advice. Also, Bella is interested in this odd young clockwork inventor fellow, who may also be interested in her.
The thing is ridiculously contrived and its premise exists to provide scenes of gardening and the main characters intermingling in humorous or wistful fashion. It's not a brilliant script, but it has its moments. It's ponderous with metaphor, but it's never mean and it's pleasant and fun to watch. The acting and photography are nice. A sweet little diversion.
Gifted: A beautiful, intelligent, and heartfelt movie, something like Proof crossed with My Sister's Keeper.
Chris Evans is Frank, who is raising his insanely gifted niece who was left in his living room as a baby by his insanely gifted sister after she committed suicide in his bathroom. The sister's intentions become slightly clearer as the movie progresses; however, Frank a) has given Mary, who is now 6 years old (McKenna Grace), access to enough mathematical reading material for her to already be well into advanced PhD level mathematics and b) is trying to send her to first grade in a normal school where the kids her age are learning basic arithmetic in the hopes of her having a more normal childhood than his sister. (It's not clear to me what he's been doing with the child until the movie starts.)
Frank lives a spartan life, and his mother, though she loves Frank, thinks the combination of a one room house and inadequate education is going to rob Mary of the chance to solve the same great proof that her daughter was working on. But Frank blames himself and his mother for his sister's suicide.They go to court to figure out who the girl should live with (again, it's not clear why the mother waited until now to make this move; and FYI, the father is basically out of the picture.)
If you overlook the two niggling questions above, it is wondrous to see McKenna (who is actually 11) act with such poise and emotion. Much of the movie is just watching a smart kid try to deal with her broken family, her loving uncle and his protective friend (Octavia Spencer), and the idiot children who inhabit her world, while the other parts are a courtroom drama without any bad guys and without any clear path to happiness for anyone. It's touching and emotional, funny and suspenseful.
Worth seeing.
Paterson: This is a very unambitious movie by Jim Jarmusch, starring Adam Driver as an unpublished poet named Paterson who drives a bus in Paterson, NJ. He has a girlfriend who doesn't do anything but paint everything in the house in black and white patterns but who wants to play guitar. Every day, Paterson wakes up, goes to work, drives a bus, walks a dog, drinks a beer in a bar, comes home, and straightens his mailbox. He steals time to write poems and he hears other people talking about their lives.
I know this because five repetitions of this is the first hour of the movie, after which I'm afraid I gave up. After I gave up I read the synopsis on Wikipedia and discovered that something slightly interesting happens a little after I gave up, and then nothing happens again, a little like Old Man and the Sea but less intense and less literate.
Everyone does a lovely job acting, and the directing and cinematography are all well done, and admittedly that's a nice thing to see. The only uplift in the movie comes from the four poems written for the movie by Ron Padgett; like the movie, they seem a little dull at the start but, unlike the movie, they display flashes of beauty as they progress. This wasn't enough to keep me watching, unfortunately. Maybe I was in a bad mood when I watched it. I just think there needs to be a little more there, there.
If you want to hear from the poet and how he came to be involved with the movie, click here.
Primer: This 2006 movie is probably the definitive focus on time travel for time travel's sake movie. It tells the story of two guys who are working on various chemical/material engineering projects, when they discover that they have invented a time travel box (it's a complicated explanation of waves that travel back and forth between tie periods). They then have various reactions to it: they go back in time and make money by betting on stocks that they know will go up, and eventually have a falling out about whether to continue using the box(es). Like later movies, such as Inception and Interstellar, the movie takes the math seriously enough to try to explain the paradoxes.
The movie looks like it was shot with a budget of a few thousand dollars, but the camera work is good enough for what it's trying to do, although it looks grainy and dark. The acting is fine. The script is ... well, it starts off with techno jumble that was easy enough for me to understand, but as it gets close to the end I just got lost, After reading up on the explanation, I can say that it does make sense, but it seems like they deliberately make it impossible to follow on screen.
More of a curiosity piece than an enjoyable movie. At least it wasn't bad and annoying.
Thursday, May 23, 2019
If We Don't Save History, No One Will
The only surviving recordings of long dead indigenous tribes. Numerous Egyptian mummies, including an unopened coffin. Frescoes that survived the eruption of Vesuvius. Artifacts from the Nazca and Inca cultures, including a 3,500 year old Chilean man. An impeccable fossil record that boasted of 110 million year turtles, the nation's largest sauropods, and its most unique carnivores. The biological collections of hundreds of diverse insects and birds. An invaulable record of our global heritage, the fruits of 200 years of labor, were in one night baked, burned, and broiled. Brazil's independence day, for many, came not with cheers, but with weeping.
Brazil is far from the only place where history is threatened or destroyed. The Taj Mahal is now so discolored and degraded by air pollution that an Indian Supreme Court has suggested either shutdown or demolition. The Notre Dame de Paris is falling apart and is in need of a $114 million restoration, which currently relies on foreign donations. 2,000 kilometers of the Great Wall of China have disappeared since the Ming Dynasty, with only 8.2% of it in good condition according to a 2014 study. The Colosseum is routinely vandalized by tourists. In 2014, the beard on Tutenkhamen's mask snapped off during cleaning and was crudely glued back on, but thankfully repaired with beeswax by professionals in 2015. Consider too our natural history. The Great Barrier Reef is being bleached into ruin by rising ocean temperatures. Everest, our highest peak, is accumulating trash and human waste. Severe droughts influenced by climate change are degrading the Amazon rainforest. Floating islands of garbage are filling our oceans and farm pollution has produced an oxygen-lacking dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Will Venice, New Orleans, or the Maldives still be above land when the seas rise? How much access to their history and culture will be lost as a result?
This century alone has seen incalculable loss to the greatest treasures of history. In 2007, IKEA destroyed ten ancient tombs dating back 1,800 years to make room for construction in China's Nanjing province. Greenpeace lost much of its credibility as a conservationist movement in 2015 when its activists illegally crossed into the Nazca Lines and permanently damaged the soil. In 2013, a 2,300 year old Mayan pyramid was bulldozed so its limestone could make new roads. That same year, a 5,000 year old pyramid was bulldozed by construction companies in Peru. In 2014, a 5,000 year old rock painting in Quesada, Spain was destroyed by thieves who tried to steal it. ISIS, ravaged the glory of the Middle East in Mosul by destroying statues that date to Assyrian and Akkadian eras, blew up the tomb of Jonah, and brought ruin to Syria's historic Palmyra. Meanwhile our "ally", Saudi Arabia, continued its rape and pillage of Islamic heritage in Mecca by building a garish clocktower over a historic Ottoman fortress. Never mind the botched art "restorations": The Roman mosaics in Turkey, a 500 year old St. George statue in Spain, and new concrete was slapped onto the Spanish medieval castle of Matrera. On and on and on it goes, where it stops, nobody knows.
We lament the burning of Alexandria's library by Ceasar's army, the destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols, the smashing of Qurayshi idols by Muhammad, Napoleon's army using the Sphinx for target practice, Heinrich Schliemann's careless erasure of Troy, the Crusaders who sacked Constantinople and melted bronze Roman statues into coins, the carzed hammer attack on Michelangelo's Pieta, the Taliban's literal "defacing" of Buddhist statues, Saddam Hussein's crude makeover of ancient Babylon, and the current idiot-in-chief's demolition of priceless Art Deco sculptures to save money on phallic tower, but we are not far from the mistakes of history, and history has all too often repeated itself.
We are grateful to the Irish monks and Muslim scholars who kept the wisdom of the Greco-Roman Ancients alive, to First Lady Dolley Madison for rescuing Stuart's portrait of Washington from the White House fire, to Secretary of War Henry Stimson for knocking Kyoto off the firebombing list during the Pacific War, to the Malians of Timbuktu who saved their ancient manuscripts from the Turaeg rebels, and many others, but such heroes are few and far between. History always has so very few heroes.
The greatest threats to history are war, greed, dictatorship, vandalism, and negligence. The latter was what struck Brazil's museum. Brazilians have complained of austerity measures that cut funding to the musuem's upkeep. A situation so terrible that the museum did not have fire sprinklers, that even my college apartment has, nor were firefighters able to access hydrants to put the fires out. Brazil could apparently afford to host the World Cup in 2014, the Summer Olympics in 2016, but not to install fire sprinklers in its national museum. This is what happens when profit is put over people. If our history isn't even safe in musuems, among the curators, then it isn't safe anywhere. We must redouble our efforts, all of us, as global citizens, so that access to the treasures of our heritage, the lineage of our ancestors, the very stuff that makes us human, is never again erased from the modern memory. Even here, there is hope. After the tomb of Jonah was destroyed, archaeologists discovered an Assyrian palace not seen since 7th century BC. There's a lesson in that, perhaps.
New Year, Fist Update....
Hello all,
Just wanted to drop in and give an update. The transition from WGF is complete, we have our warehouse and have been shipping from that location for about two months. We have worked out the software issues for the wholesale orders and have been filling them.
We have about a year's supply of product on hand and OOS items such as the Panzerjäger are on the water heading here now.
I have been working on the day to day business aspects, cost analysis, product restocks back end implementation issues, etc. so not a lot of glamorous items to give an updated on for that front.
We have two restock orders incoming from China, the cost has been educational. The cost of shipping is not just crazy expensive for my customers but for us as well. In some cases, it costs more to ship a product than it does to produce it, in other cases the cost to produce a kit was not in line with what it is being sold at into distribution. Some kits were being sold at a net loss once shipping was factored in. Unfortunately, this will mean a price increase, some kits will see a marginal increase, other will be a bit more drastic.
I will give a detailed SKU by SKU run down and explanation later this week.
We have two new SKU's that will be offered once they arrive. The 15mm scale Capacitor cooler and a 60mm tall display model of one of our Assault Troopers. We should have these in hand sometime next month. We are putting the final touches on the files for the Shadokesh main trooper box set. No eta on a release date yet for the Shadokesh, until they are on the water and heading here it is simply impractical to give an estimate.
That's it for now.
All the best!
Mark
Episode 18: Threes Company Is Live!
Episode 18: Threes Company is live!
https://soundcloud.com/user-989538417/episode-18-threes-company
We talk with John Siewenie of Picoarmor about small scale gaming.
The Veteran Wargamer is brought to you by King's Hobbies and Games.
https://www.kingshobbiesandgames.com/
Special Artizan Service Miniatures
https://www.facebook.com/Special-Artizan-Service-Miniatures-1791793644366746/
Picoarmor links:
http://Picoarmor.com
Twitter @socialpicoarmor
https://www.facebook.com/picoarmor/
Other companies we mentioned:
Oddzial Osmy
https://www.facebook.com/oddzial.osmy/
Blitzkrieg Commander
Cold War Commander
Future War Commander
http://www.blitzkrieg-commander.com/
GHQ
http://www.ghqmodels.com/
Soviet Army FMs
https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm100-2-1.pdf
https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm100-2-2.pdf
https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm100-2-3.pdf
Central Front
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/4255/central-front-series
Panzer Korps
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/16323/panzer-korps
Advanced Squad Leader
http://www.multimanpublishing.com/Products/tabid/58/CategoryID/4/Default.aspx
Panzer Blitz
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2238/panzerblitz
Rock-Con
https://www.facebook.com/groups/93980714283/
Kingmaker
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/987/kingmaker
Winter War
http://www.winterwar.org/
Diplomacy
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/483/diplomacy
I Ain't Been Shot, Mum
http://toofatlardies.co.uk/product-category/i-ain%C2%92t-been-shot-mum/
Team Yankee (Battlefront)
http://www.team-yankee.com/
Baccus 6mm
https://www.baccus6mm.com/
Games Plus
http://www.games-plus.com/
Historicon
http://hmgs.site-ym.com/?page=HconHome
Aepticon
http://www.adepticon.org/
Team Yankee (Audible)
https://www.audible.com/pd/Fiction/Team-Yankee-Audiobook/B01LXT7NLS
Red Storm Rising (Audible)
https://www.audible.com/pd/Mysteries-Thrillers/Red-Storm-Rising-Audiobook/B004D5K3LE?qid=1496350535&sr=1-1
Music courtesy bensound.com. Recorded with zencastr.com. Edited with Audacity. Make your town beautiful; get a haircut.
https://soundcloud.com/user-989538417/episode-18-threes-company
We talk with John Siewenie of Picoarmor about small scale gaming.
The Veteran Wargamer is brought to you by King's Hobbies and Games.
https://www.kingshobbiesandgames.com/
Special Artizan Service Miniatures
https://www.facebook.com/Special-Artizan-Service-Miniatures-1791793644366746/
Picoarmor links:
http://Picoarmor.com
Twitter @socialpicoarmor
https://www.facebook.com/picoarmor/
Other companies we mentioned:
Oddzial Osmy
https://www.facebook.com/oddzial.osmy/
Blitzkrieg Commander
Cold War Commander
Future War Commander
http://www.blitzkrieg-commander.com/
GHQ
http://www.ghqmodels.com/
Soviet Army FMs
https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm100-2-1.pdf
https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm100-2-2.pdf
https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm100-2-3.pdf
Central Front
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/4255/central-front-series
Panzer Korps
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/16323/panzer-korps
Advanced Squad Leader
http://www.multimanpublishing.com/Products/tabid/58/CategoryID/4/Default.aspx
Panzer Blitz
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2238/panzerblitz
Rock-Con
https://www.facebook.com/groups/93980714283/
Kingmaker
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/987/kingmaker
Winter War
http://www.winterwar.org/
Diplomacy
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/483/diplomacy
I Ain't Been Shot, Mum
http://toofatlardies.co.uk/product-category/i-ain%C2%92t-been-shot-mum/
Team Yankee (Battlefront)
http://www.team-yankee.com/
Baccus 6mm
https://www.baccus6mm.com/
Games Plus
http://www.games-plus.com/
Historicon
http://hmgs.site-ym.com/?page=HconHome
Aepticon
http://www.adepticon.org/
Team Yankee (Audible)
https://www.audible.com/pd/Fiction/Team-Yankee-Audiobook/B01LXT7NLS
Red Storm Rising (Audible)
https://www.audible.com/pd/Mysteries-Thrillers/Red-Storm-Rising-Audiobook/B004D5K3LE?qid=1496350535&sr=1-1
Music courtesy bensound.com. Recorded with zencastr.com. Edited with Audacity. Make your town beautiful; get a haircut.
All The Base Colors Of The Rainbow
I finished the orange bases last night and got the Orlocks on them. I took some shots of the bases on the cardboard terrain that inspired them. Not dead-on matches but they're close enough. Next up are the touch-ups and finsihing the Juves, Heavy and Leader.
Like A Book Made To Play: The Immersive Experience Of “Here They Lie”
Here They Lie is a Playstation 4 game signed by Tangentlemen and Santa Monica Studio. The game transports you to a terrifying parallel world from which you cannot escape. Inside this bizarre place, it's necessary to explore a nightmarish city inhabited by malevolent creatures. In this experience, the point of view is first-person and you can only use an old flashlight as a weapon.
In the whole gaming narrative you must wrestle with life or death moral choices to uncover the mystery of the woman in yellow (a kind of Ariadne that guides you through the city maze and corridors inside buildings). There are two ways to play Here They Lie: classic version or using VR glasses (which enhances the immersion in the story). Check the mysterious trailer below:
Despite the beautiful graphics and soundtrack, Here They Lie caught my attention through the perfect balance between narrative and gameplay. You only run from the monsters; inside this dark dimension, you are only a voyeur, observing a scenario of pain and blasphemous acts. The only thing you really do is walking around the huge city capturing hints to discover what is happening. Where's the fun in it? I think Here They Lie is the kind of experience that brings literature features to play.
For me, having played Here They Lie from the beginning to the end was like reading a book written with a Kafkanian and Lovecraftian touch. The situation is too absurd but, with the suspension of disbelief, you can accept that this strange world makes sense. The story grabs your attention and curiosity leads you to find the answer for some questions like: How did I get here? Who is the woman in the golden dress? What are the creatures with animal heads? Why did it happen to me?
Games like this one lead us to the multiple possibilities that we can experience today in the gaming market. We still have "triple A" first-person shooters with zombies but on the other hand, a huge universe to explore fantasy in a different way. We are leaving a privileged ambient of ludic possibilities. To play different games like this one is to create a richer repertoire for classes, gaming projects or gaming discussions.
Let's play!
#GoGamers
In the whole gaming narrative you must wrestle with life or death moral choices to uncover the mystery of the woman in yellow (a kind of Ariadne that guides you through the city maze and corridors inside buildings). There are two ways to play Here They Lie: classic version or using VR glasses (which enhances the immersion in the story). Check the mysterious trailer below:
Despite the beautiful graphics and soundtrack, Here They Lie caught my attention through the perfect balance between narrative and gameplay. You only run from the monsters; inside this dark dimension, you are only a voyeur, observing a scenario of pain and blasphemous acts. The only thing you really do is walking around the huge city capturing hints to discover what is happening. Where's the fun in it? I think Here They Lie is the kind of experience that brings literature features to play.
For me, having played Here They Lie from the beginning to the end was like reading a book written with a Kafkanian and Lovecraftian touch. The situation is too absurd but, with the suspension of disbelief, you can accept that this strange world makes sense. The story grabs your attention and curiosity leads you to find the answer for some questions like: How did I get here? Who is the woman in the golden dress? What are the creatures with animal heads? Why did it happen to me?
Games like this one lead us to the multiple possibilities that we can experience today in the gaming market. We still have "triple A" first-person shooters with zombies but on the other hand, a huge universe to explore fantasy in a different way. We are leaving a privileged ambient of ludic possibilities. To play different games like this one is to create a richer repertoire for classes, gaming projects or gaming discussions.
Let's play!
#GoGamers
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