Subtitled for your reading enjoyment

It's been Foreign Film Week in casa del 'd'. (This means subtitles oh favorite niece. You gots to read those movies. Because they're awesome. And not in English. You could turn the subtitles off, but unless you speak Cantonese or Swedish it's just a whole lot of pictures at 40 frames a second. Or whatever that film speed is.)

We started off with Hard Boiled. Mostly for historical and completist sorts of reasons. It was interesting mostly for those same reasons. Although anything involving babies, cotton balls, or fire extinguishing was awesome. And hilarious. I think this film is best described as a reverse classic. It's easy to see now how other films have built on or ripped off this one. Sometimes to better effect (Infernal Affairs comes to mind), sometimes not. So it is a genre building/influencing sort of film, but mostly it's interesting to see where things went. John Woo wasn't quite the master of choreographed bullet play yet and there were no doves to be seen! Shocking.

Next up was Let the Right One In the good vampire film from last year. That happened to be from Sweden. It was an interesting coming of age sort of tale that left you not really wanting to be a vampire. At least not one stuck in a twelve year old's body. Although she was quite adept at dropping from trees and killing people. Lots of practice I suspect. There were some good creepy moments and some nice nods to vampire lore and there was NO SPARKLING. That's always a sign of a good vampire movie. In fact sunlight managed to do exactly what it was supposed to do in a rather nice scene featuring a rather distraught character.

Cutthroat Caverns needs to be played by probably at least 4 people and several of them need to not be me. I actually really like the game (despite what you may hear from those in attendance at the game last night). Yes, yes, take things too seriously, get stuck on things too easily. These are not new comments in regards to my gaming personality. The point is, it's fun. It's mean on occasion, but still fun. Now if we can just get McK to realize how some of the cards work and that hoarding doesn't do any good.

G has managed to make a gamer out of my wife. He's been wanting to play through Zelda: Twilight Princess which means my wife gets to play through it for him. She's actually quite close to the end. Truly amazing. A feat not even the letter 'r' has managed to accomplish yet. I am quite proud of both of them for rising to this occasion. Brings a tear to my eye it does. Good on ya G.

From Hell is a dark book. And I don't mean in just subject matter (that was a given). The artwork (on purpose I suspect) can be pretty difficult to discern. This made reading it a chore. I've technically still got the annotations to go through. We'll see. Mostly it made me want to poke around other things dealing with ol' Jack.

I'm not prepared to deal with Spring and a lawn that wants constant attention again. I think we need to turn the back yard into one big gardening experiment... Wife disagrees. Must look into means of remedying that. Hmm...

And on a final note I do not recommend falling down the stairs. It's not pleasant. Nor is it fun. And now I have to get back in the habit of exercising in the morning as well. Stupid stairs.

Quiet moments

Another strangely quiet week on the entertainment front. There are a couple graphic novels I'm plugging my way through - Alan Moore's Jack the Ripper piece, From Hell (which is getting all sorts of tangled up in my head with the Patricia Cornwell book from a couple years ago, the movie version [from longer than that] and Drood the novel about Charles Dickens that I'm also currently reading - all I can say is London must have been one horrible place to live for a while there) and The Umbrella Academy by Gerard Way I believe (who is also, apparently, the lead singer for My Chemical Romance). So yeah, some books. Some with pictures, some without.

I can't think of any movies recently seen. I've been a little more interested in board games again. We finally got Drakon which is a nice little tile-laying dungeon themed game. It has some lovely little figures that I want to paint. A dragon and 6 adventurers. They are very small, which does not bode well for a really nice final product, but I really want to try. At any rate, you're trying to steal the dragon's gold while preventing the others in the dungeon from doing the same. My wife is apparently an idiot savant at this game. She has yet to lose. I almost wrested victory from her twice. Undone once by an unbelievably unlucky coin draw and another time by an evil daughter. Oh she knew what she was doing alright. Rotating my poor chamber so I couldn't get the last coin I needed to win, thus sealing yet another victory for evil spouse Ransacks-a-lot. It's a fun little game that seems to allow a pretty wide age range.

Tonight I believe we'll be trying Cutthroat Caverns - a game where you need to keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. You're once again in a Dungeon trying to fight your way out past 9 encounters. The trick is you want to be the one to land the killing blow so that you get the points. You do your best to undermine and/or kill (depending on how late in the game it is) everyone else while not completely alienating them. After all, if you get stuck in this place by yourself, no one makes it out alive. Sounds terribly fun. And quite possibly mean. Will have to see how well we handle that (and by we I mean I). I picked up one of the expansions that goes with it that supposedly makes it almost like a D&D campaign - a little more story tying events together. Again, should be fun. Will let you know.

Read the 2nd half of the new Neil Gaiman Batman comic. I think I liked the first half better - the payoff wasn't quite what I expected, but the story itself was very good. And it incorporated an odd Goodnight Moon reference. So points for that. I guess. If you run across it, it's recommended.

Oh, I meant to link to the news that the third Twilight movie has a new director. They're using the guy that did 30 Days of Night. I... I don't know whether to laugh maniacally, or in shame. This guy certainly gets vampires. Too bad Meyer doesn't. Maybe the sparkling will cause temporary blindness and then there will be lots of carnage as they decimate the small town before taking over the world. One can only hope.

Trip the light fantastic

I've gone through a few more fantasy themed tomes as I've finished off a few more books in the Dungeon series by Joann Sfar. They've been pretty fun little reads. I think the main Zenith arc is my favorite, but Parade and Twilight each have their moments. I like the idea that they've set up distinct time periods for the dungeon that they can write about. Nice little idea. Although the Twilight series certainly takes a turn for the odd.

Speaking of the series that shall not be named, I'm sad that this exists. Having wreaked havoc upon the book and film industries must junk food really be next? At least we can all agree that this is junk food.

These are decent. Some are funnier than others. I think it mostly depends on how much they rely on the work itself to provide the humor.

And that's about all you're gonna get. I'm far too tired to entertain you lot. Oh and there is no photographic proof that the girls were ever in some sort of play this year. You can blame lovely wife. Something about a DVD that may or may not get made. So there.

Spinning my wheels

Well, I'm not sure I could tell you what's gone on in the past week. I have vague memories of watching Mummy 3. Not really worth your time. They mostly forgot what made the first one fun, instead choosing to almost parody that style. Which was in some ways already a parody. Oh well. There were some funny bits at least. And the effects weren't bad.

I'm pretty sure I've read a lot of graphic novels lately. I remember Locke and Key: Welcome to Lovecraft by Joe Hill (of Heart Shaped Box - so good). It was appropriately spooky and certainly reminded me that he's Stephen King's son. I think I saw a lot more of his Dad's influence on this one than in some of his other work.

Dungeon is a French fantasy story that's rather amusing, if cartoon-ily bloody. Follow Herbert the Duck as he tries to become a barbarian. Or at least able to pull his sword from the scabbard. His friend Marvin (the vegetarian dragon) tries his best to keep him alive. It's all good fun.

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser is old fantasy at it's finest. Mike Mignola (Hellboy) illustrates Howard Chaykin's telling of the old Fritz Leiber stories. Fun romp through classic fantasy.

Our front yard is currently in a state of disrepair as we wait for the city to come inspect our sprinkler hookup. It's a good thing we have neighbors that understand this stuff. Although my back is certainly not thrilled that we decided to take the city up on irrigation water...

McK and M have both been in plays the last couple days at school. Lovely wife reports that all went well. I have no idea if photographic proof of this exists or not.

Favorite niece and younger Sis are celebrating birthdays soon. We wish them well. And that's a pretty good note to end on. Happy birthday!

Trudging towards the future

Didn't really participate in any April's Fool pranks yesterday. This was my favorite Thinkgeek April Fool's product. And it's good to see that in the tradition of the 8 bit tie, they are going to try and make them. Needs me one of them yo.

We had a fun little roundtable at the Library yesterday focused on books we didn't like. There were quite a few (and we did discuss Twilight and Stephanie Meyer a touch). My favorite Meyer related bit was that the Library keeps two recommendation lists - people that like vampire stories and people that like Stephanie Meyer stories. There you go, further proof that THEY'RE NOT VAMPIRES. This cannot be stated enough. I wonder if the blink tag still works... NOT VAMPIRES Oh it does. This is good.

The story I sort of got around to voicing as one I didn't care for was Blindness I suspect you can track down my thoughts on it in the archives. That's right, it's all about the laziness on these here intarwebs.

What was interesting about the conversation were some of the reasons behind why people didn't like various stories. Things like bad endings, to not wrapping up the plot to just plain poor writing (*cough*Twilight*cough* ^_^). My own dislike for Blindness stemmed from an odd writing style that was sort of helpful and sort of not and a lot of reader manipulation. The author had a story to tell, realistic characters be damned. It was also interesting to see at what point people would just stop reading and move on. Or if they'd finish. I'd say I've finally moved into the move on camp. I have far too many things I want to read to suffer through something that isn't that interesting/good. Even for mocking purposes.

In an unrelated moment, this is funny. Because it's true. Hee hee.

Apparently I need to brush up on my sci-fi reading. I was a bit hard pressed to name some good starting points yesterday. I used to read quite a bit, but I guess it has been a while. Strange. I fell back on the always reliable William Gibson, but I need a few more guns in the arsenal. I may have to check out my Goodreads list again and see what's in there. Or what should be. I may also have to mess around with the shelving there. Maybe create some custom shelves... Cause I have lots of time to do that. Really.

I am still in search of a good fantasy themed board game. You lot are not helping. Apparently this is a difficult topic. While not as hotly contested as some wargames, it looks like fantasy games are a battle zone. This does not bode well for my indecisive nature.

Favorite new recipe: Tangy Shredded Chicken Sandwich Thing. They're great. Warm or cold. Fresh or as leftovers. Pure Yumminess. On a bun.

Must get thoughts sorted on square foot garden. Will need to get that going soon. Also really need to get this sprinkler hookup thing taken care of. And we're contemplating refinancing the house due to the lovely economic disaster. Too many things to tackle.

We're about to finish off Season 3 of Case Closed. Kids are really enjoying it. I am constantly amused as I watch the girls develop their reading/viewing tastes. McK certainly has a thing for mysteries. M isn't too far behind. Although I suspect she likes fantasy a touch more. G just goes along for the ride. Unless there are dinosaurs. That's just a given. We'll probably suffer through watch Mummy 3 this weekend. Hmm and High School Musical 3 come to think of it. Apparently it's a 3 sort of weekend.

Well, I will close this off with props to lovely wife's cousin for the curry packets. We had a rather nice Chicken Korma for dinner. Mmmm curry....