In which I talk about Blade Runner AGAIN

So. Blade Runner. You'd think I'd get tired of talking about this film. Actually, more to the point you'd think Ridley Scott would get tired of re-working it every few years. The "Final Cut" (and those quotes are the "made with the fingers" variety) came out a while ago and I finally (pun firmly intended) got around to seeing it. I feel a little bad it's taken this long, but eh, whatcha gonna do? I can't actually tell you the last time I rented a movie...

At any rate. As has been documented here in this blog (not long after it started in fact) I have a bit of history with this film. From birthday parties to college classes the film (as well as the original PKD novel) has a bit of a place in my life. Much to the disbelief of friends and relatives. (Boring is the word most often invoked.) Philistines the lot of them. I'm not completely convinced the Final Cut really offers anything new, but it is certainly a touch prettier. That opening sequence (which I'm pretty sure is a touch longer now) is still breathtaking. And I think there are a couple extra quick shots and the soundtrack is tweaked in a couple places. Oddly I think Bryant's math is fixed in this version once again making it a little less obvious that Scott's Deckard is a replicant, but whatever. Anyone that's followed the film knows his opinion on that score.

I think the thing I enjoyed most about watching it this go round were all the little touches. Gaff's origami, the sound of the neon lights flashing, the photo reading machine, Vangelis's score. It's all highly iconic stuff now and in some ways a little difficult to appreciate. The language of this film has been borrowed so many times (from 5th Element to Cowboy Bebop to well, really any dystopic sci fi film of the last couple decades) it's easy to forget just how new it was at the time. Between this film and 2001 (there's that boring word again) I'm not entirely certain there's another film out there that shaped sci fi cinema as much.

So I'll avoid all the talk of humanity and dystopia and influence and simply say, yeah Blade Runner still has it. There's a reason this thing is a classic and a touchstone. If you've not seen it, track down the Final Cut and give it a look. Your geek cred will thank you.

Speaking of dystopias family, congratulations go out to younger sis on birth of baby girl. Although you don't fix the spelling of that middle name and well... At any rate. Congratulations, glad all are healthy and well. Good luck restoring any sort of order to that house. You are all doomed now as you are well and truly out numbered.

I've been watching Piranha these last few mornings while I exercise. Also a truly great film.

I think I'll stop commenting on Monster until I've finished the series, but if you've thought about reading manga, but not been sure of a decent series to start with, this one's a good bet. Pretty compelling.

I'm this close to finishing The Strain. It is good. More when done.

I'll be starting the sequel to The Magic Thief (called Lost I believe) soon. Looking forward to that. It's a pretty good little series.

Added in the Event and Relic decks for Cutthroat Caverns last night. They do offer a nice little twist on the gameplay. Usually making things even more difficult for the poor players that refuse to trust anybody. Not bad. I really need to convince everyone to take another stab at Arkham Horror. I've been itching to play that one again... I blame that Innsmouth blood.

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.