Dune: Part Two – The Cinematic Battle for Arrakis

Posted on April 15, 2024 by JC

I favourably reviewed the 2021 Dune film almost a year after its release in theatres and have watched it multiple times since. I certainly thought it was better than the 1984 David Lynch adaptation which was all I could then compare it to outside of the 1965 novel. Since writing that review, I have watched the 2000 TV mini-series which I’d never seen. I was impressed with it and also watched the follow-up Children of Dune which adapts Herbert’s next two novels. 

After seeing Dune: Part Two last week, I decided to re-watch Lynch’s film for the first time in over twenty years. I still don’t like it but it was better than I remember and would be improved considerably without the grotesqueness. This review will focus on the latest film but I expect I will be writing another post considering all three major adaptations of the original novel now that they are fresh in my memory. I will state at the outset that I already need to watch this again as I’m not sure how I would feel on a second viewing. Although I saw it in the cinema, it wasn’t the experience I had been hoping for as the cinema complex was dirty and smelled like urine. This is more a sign of the times and not the film’s fault but I can’t say that I regret missing the first part on the big screen anymore. Continue reading →

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Doom Guy: Life in First Person Review

Posted on April 3, 2024 by JC

Doom Guy: Life in First Person by John Romero, Abrams Press, August 23rd, 2023

One of the better known books about video games is Masters of Doom by David Kushner which was published back in 2003 and which I read over a decade ago. I remember it being an enthralling read that told the story of id Software mostly through the personalities of John Carmack and John Romero; from their early days through to the early 2000s. A special appeal for me (and I’m sure most others), was that I had played many of the games they created including the Commander Keen games, Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM and Quake and so it was fascinating learning about the personalities and creation process behind these games. It also covered Romero’s more notorious and less successful work at Ion Storm which I wasn’t familiar with outside the mockery it received at places like Something Awful.com.

Romero seems to have generally approved of Masters of Doom but his memoir offers differing perspectives on a number of the events as well as delving more deeply into his early years and his life following the failure of Ion Storm through to today. 

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Moviebob’s Book: Blob by Blob

Posted on March 30, 2024 by JC

  Super Mario Bros. 3: Brick by Brick by Bob Chipman, Fangamer, 1st July, 2013

Why would I review a book that is not only out of print but seems to be one the author would mostly want to forget? Well, the main reason is that I’ve reviewed quite a bit of gamma fiction over the years and this is an interesting opportunity to try some gamma non-fiction. Bob Chipman (better known online as “Moviebob”), is one of the most pure living gamma archetypes (along with John Scalzi), that has a public profile. Bob is also unique in that his extreme progressivism has managed not only to alienate a significant portion of his potential audience who don’t share his views but also embarrass people he would (at least like to), consider his friends and allies. He’s really quite a fascinating figure but not for any of the reasons he would like to be.

Another reason is the book is considered notoriously bad in such a way that I was curious to look for myself. It is out of print but easy enough to find online — though I still don’t recommend it. I also state it is something he would “mostly” want to forget because he does still list it on his website as of writing. This along with a number of other books available digitally which are apparently just collections of his blog posts. 

However, after reading most of the book, I would say the main reason I’m writing a review is to make fun of it. Continue reading →

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A Gamma’s Midlife Crisis

Posted on March 23, 2024 by JC

 

Sideways by Rex Pickett, St Martin’s Griffin, October 1st, 2004

I first learned of the film Sideways through this post on what was (it is now hard to believe), one of the more entertaining websites on the Internet. I remember watching the film around this time too — though I don’t remember exactly when. I don’t think I disliked it but I do remember thinking that the two main characters were pathetic. This was when I was in my early twenties and still at university. About four years ago, I watched the film again — now being long married with children and a regular job. I still thought the two main characters were pathetic but I was better able to understand the film’s appeal. The wine tasting for example, was also something I could relate to but not for good reasons. 

More recently I found out there was a Japanese remake that changes some details but is generally the same film with the same title rendered as Saidoweizu (サイドウェイズ) in Japanese. I sought it out just recently and watched it. I only now remained curious about the novel that the original film was based on. Interestingly the film was in development before the book was published and released in theatres just months after the novel’s publication.

It might seem odd to be interested in reading a book based on a film that I didn’t really like but this is a film that was both a critical and box office success. It won numerous awards and unlike so many Oscar-bait films, remains well-regarded even twenty years later. The original book has also now had a third sequel Sideways New Zealand: The Road Back release this year so it clearly still has an audience. Continue reading →

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Fable Reconsidered

Posted on March 17, 2024 by JC

Quite a while back now, I wrote a review of the original Fable, mostly based on the Anniversary version which released around the same time. I had also meant to review both Fable II and Fable III but never got around to either. Both of the latter titles are now only available on Xbox systems as the second game was never ported to PC and the third was removed from digital stores once support ended for Microsoft’s horrid Games for Windows Live service. The series ended with the Kinect-only Fable: The Journey and the canceled Fable Legends on Xbox One. Both of which departed (or at least would have), from the core design of the main series. There were also a few other forgettable spin-offs released here and there that were related mostly in name only.

The disappointing demise of Lionhead Studios didn’t mean the end for the series though and a new Fable is currently in development with British developer Playground Games — who are best known for the Forza Horizon racing series. A teaser trailer was released last year and it frankly looks horrible. Most notably, the ugly female protagonist suggests we’re also in for a lot of the typical identity politics and degeneracy. I should quickly add before someone writes “Actually…” that none of what I expect this game will focus on is necessarily inconsistent with the original series and I shall elaborate below.

 

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Unauthorized Anthropology

Posted on March 10, 2024 by JC

Down Among the Wild Men: A narrative journal of fifteen years pursuing the Old Stone Age Aborigines of Australia by John Greenway,
Hutchinson of Australia, January 1st, 1973

This is a book I picked up a while ago very shortly after I found out it existed. I didn’t know what to expect except that it wouldn’t be the feeble and largely false analysis of the Australian Aborigines that is found today. That it would give a picture of them as they were (specifically, the desert tribes) and it certainly did not disappoint. As the books title may suggest, this is not a conventional academic work but the author certainly has all of the credentials that would be demanded of anyone who dared to contradict current wisdom. 

To state the obvious, this book would never, ever be published today and to the best of my knowledge, was only printed once over fifty years ago. As it has copious amounts of information that is not easy to find anymore, this post will quote very heavily from the book and include my commentary. So while my purpose is certainly to review it, I also want to make sure that many of the parts I found most interesting are available online. This is then somewhat similar to my review of Stalin’s War by Sean McMeekin in August, 2022.

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Conan the Adventurer

Posted on February 29, 2024 by JC

I didn’t have the pleasure of discovering Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Cimmerian through creased and sun damaged paperbacks from the 1970s as I’m sure many did. As I mentioned in my first post on Conan, I’m not sure whether it was the movie or the short-lived cartoon series that is the subject of this post. I know I would eagerly watch anything with Arnold Schwarzenegger and most other action stars growing up but at the same time, my parents wouldn’t let me watch just anything so I don’t recall what year I would have been allowed to watch that film.

Whatever the truth is, Conan the Adventurer was certainly one of my earliest introductions to Robert E. Howard’s most popular character. The show originally broadcast in late 1992 and had a longer second and final season in late 1993 but I don’t believe I watched it until a year or two after the original run. I learned in preparing for this review that it was followed by an even more short-lived successor titled Conan and the Young Warriors as well. It was produced by Sunbow Productions which is the same company behind G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, The Transformers and other cartoons that doubled as toy commercials — Conan the Adventurer was no exception here either. While having no knowledge of the source material, it was one of the more memorable cartoons of my childhood though admittedly less fondly remembered than the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series and both the X-Men and Spider-Man animated series’ which all ran around the same time. 

I had originally planned to watch the entire series in preparation for this post but it hasn’t aged so well that I would be willing to sit through more than twenty hours of it. I did however watch through the first season which is only thirteen episodes long. I also watched the final episodes and along with my vague childhood memories, this should be more than enough to judge what is a typically formulaic children’s cartoon. I don’t merely want to spout off factual information which can be obtained more easily by reading its Wikipedia entry but instead share my thoughts and compare it to the source material.

Jezmin, Snagg, Greywolf and Zula

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PC Building & Humility

Posted on February 22, 2024 by JC

This is admittedly a weird title but it is to make a wider point. I’ve probably watched the below video about twelve times through. It cuts together a bunch of reaction videos from many PC/Tech channels to a PC Building Guide put out by The Verge back in 2018. The Verge is a tech website owned by Vox Media so it was simply baffling that they could publish something so obviously incompetent with the resources they have available. The original video was quickly removed so cuts like this and reuploads elsewhere are all that is left of its existence. The Verge‘s initial reaction to the negative feedback was to double down which only drew more eyes to it. It came a few years after similarly incompetent coverage of video games where journalists showed themselves barely able to play them. Naturally, things have only got worse since.

I have come back to thinking about this recently as I recently began a new PC build myself and discovered there was a heartening follow-up to all this a few years later that I wasn’t aware of. 

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Monkeys playing in Ruins

Posted on February 15, 2024 by JC

“The monkeys called the place their city, and pretended to despise the Jungle-People because they lived in the forest. And yet they never knew what the buildings were made for nor how to use them. They would sit in circles on the hall of the king’s council chamber, and scratch for fleas and pretend to be men; or they would run in and out of the roofless houses and collect pieces of plaster and old bricks in a corner, and forget where they had hidden them, and fight and cry in scuffling crowds, and then break off to play up and down the terraces of the king’s garden, where they would shake the rose trees and the oranges in sport to see the fruit and flowers fall. They explored all the passages and dark tunnels in the palace and the hundreds of little dark rooms, but they never remembered what they had seen and what they had not; and so drifted about in ones and twos or crowds telling each other that they were doing as men did. They drank at the tanks and made the water all muddy, and then they fought over it, and then they would all rush together in mobs and shout: “There is no one in the jungle so wise and good and clever and strong and gentle as the Bandar-log.” Then all would begin again till they grew tired of the city and went back to the tree-tops, hoping the Jungle-People would notice them.”

Kaa’s Hunting, The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

Growing up somewhere famous for wine, I went on a few wine tours as a young adult. Neither myself nor any of the people I was with really knew anything about wine or wine tasting and the staff at the various wineries we visited seemed quite accustomed to this among their clientele. Essentially, we were getting driven around in a minivan as we slowly got drunk and perhaps bought a bottle or two that took our fancy. This was a lot of fun but I had some sense at the time — and certainly do now — that I was a phony. I had little appreciation for the wine outside its power to inebriate and I now look back at my young self as something like a savage trying to use a knife and fork for the first time.

I think the connection between the Bandar-log in Kipling’s beloved story and my own aping of the pass times of more sophisticated people must be obvious. I wanted to start with an anecdote about myself as I will be having a go at almost everyone and I don’t want to pretend I’m an exception — though I certainly try to be. This is also similar in theme to a post from last year around the same time. As I write, it is the evening of Ash Wednesday so it is unsurprising I had similar thoughts to these during Lent last year. Continue reading →

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Excellence in a Sea of Mediocrity

Posted on February 7, 2024 by JC

It is no secret that Hollywood puts out an awful lot of terrible films and things have gotten considerably worse in the last few years. Even studios like Pixar (that once consistently put out great films), have had a string of disasters in recent years. What is amazing about this is that much of it is quite deliberate. With this in mind, one must be reminded that very little of what Hollywood puts out at any time is very good. Most film releases in any given year are quickly forgotten — as indeed are most new novels and video games. This includes many films that are financially and/or critically successful and even a lot of multi-award winners. 

Occasionally there is a film that only makes a minor splash on release but later comes to be much better appreciated. Peter Weir’s Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World from 2003, is one such film.

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