Aeronautic Primates and Other Delights

My Week in Movies: June 27 - July 3

2021-07-05T21:34:35Z

I think I've petered out on Mass Effect. While I still have a couple of different playthroughs I can do, I've been playing these games for a month straight. I've switched to Outer Worlds as a breather game, especially as there is DLC I haven't played.

Finally socialized for the first time in over a year, going over to airawyn's place for a small gathering. It was a lot of fun and I didn't forget how to talk to people! I think.

Here's the very short movie list:

Fate of the Furious (2017)

I'm all caught up on Fast and Furious movies that are out on digital disc. I still need to see F9, though.

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My Week in Movies: November 8 - 14

2020-11-16T18:53:45Z

Still adjusting to the new daily schedule, but I think I have it worked out.

I bought Assassin's Creed: Valhalla against my better judgment and was immediately punished for it. The game doesn't work properly. I have some sort of bug that only affects me where the stealth button just doesn't work 97% of the time. In a stealth game, that's a big problem. So now I'm just waiting for a patch that fixes an issue that I haven't seen anyone else report. Yes, I checked if it was the controller and it's not. So I'm back to replaying Odyssey.

Had a tooth extracted Thursday. Whee.

Movies I've seen before are in italics

Blood and Roses (1960)
Der Zinker (1963)
The Puzzle of the Red Orchid (1962)
The Inn on the River (1962)
The Door with 7 Locks (1962)
Bay of Blood (1971)
Friday the 13th (1980)
Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)
Friday the 13th Part III (1982)
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)

Since I now have a region-free DVD player, I've been working through my Region 2 DVDs, which include Roger Vadim's Blood and Roses (striking imagery, but kind of plodding) and a box set of West German crime films based on the works of Edgar Wallace.

In preparation for Friday the 13th, I showed sol_se Bay of Blood, a precursor to the American slasher genre. Good bloody fun.

On Saturday the 14th, we watched the first five Friday the 13th movies. They are not good, but they scratch a certain itch.

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My Week in Movies: July 26 - August 1

2020-08-02T23:58:36Z

I played through Until Dawn again, unfortunately getting three characters killed (to be fair one of them is really hard to keep alive). I played Kingdom Hearts 3 up until a point, but there's a whole section that requires you to deftly maneuver your basically un-manueverable spaceship and I'm not doing that. Probably. We'll see where I am in a week.

We also finished Legend of Korra Season 4. What a good show.

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

Housebound (2014)
Dracula (1931)
Blood on the Moon (1948)
Dracula's Daughter (1936)
I Married a Witch (1942)
Daughters of Darkness (1971)

sol_se found Housebound on Tubi and was really eager for me to see it, so we did. It's a neat New Zealand horror with comedic touches about a woman under house arrest, but the house might be haunted. There are multiple twists and it's very tightly edited and paced. I liked it a lot.

Then she wanted to see Dracula's Daughter, but we got about three minutes in before I remembered that it followed directly from Dracula (1931) which she had also never seen. So we watched that first. We watched the sequel the next day. Lugosi is excellent as the Count in Dracula, but you can see director Tod Browning basically giving up for large sections of the England-set portion of the film. Dracula's Daughter is dark and foreboding, but suffers from a lot of talking head scenes. It does have a couple scenes of (accidental, probably) lesbian desire.

I made a resolution to start using my Criterion Channel subscription more, as it's basically been on the wayside since sol_se moved in. So, Saturday morning before she woke up, I caught Blood on the Moon, part of their Western noir collection. I was mostly drawn to it because it's directed by Robert Wise. I don't know how noir it is, but it is a satisfying oater with a complex leading character (played by Robert Mitchum).

I Married a Witch was on sol_se's To Watch list, so we checked that out. I've seen it before, but I was happy to watch it again. Veronica Lake is great fun as the titular witch, weaving a spell on Fredric March (who is much too old for her). It's a delightful comedy.

Since we were already watching lesbian vampire movies, we absolutely had to go to Daughters of Darkness. Such a lush horror film, with some very weird death scenes. Delphine Seyrig is divine.

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My Week in Movies: July 12 - 18

2020-07-20T01:07:16Z

Big news first, I finished The Witcher 3! That took me a very long time. I've now moved on to Pillars of Eternity, which is *interesting* on a console, but it was only $10. Finished both seasons 1 and 2 of Korra as well.

Movies I've seen before are in italics.

Cat People (1942)
The Old Guard (2020)
Curse of the Cat People (1944)
Ringu (1998)
The Ring (2002)

Wow, feels like I watched a lot more. sol_se was very keen on werecats and wanted to watch Cat People, which still holds up. Great, moody film. We also watched the badly titled sequel Curse of the Cat People, which features no curses or cat people, but does make me cry every time.

I liked The Old Guard. I wonder if I'm capable of being excited about the movies I watch anymore. sol_se was ecstatic about this film and I felt it was pretty good, but it didn't blow my socks off.

I remember Ringu being a lot scarier, but it's just a fine little thrill ride. I suppose it's not really a film that rewards rewatching. We watched The Ring for comparison and found it largely the same, except way more American. The male lead also sucked in the remake.

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My Week in No Movies: May 10 - 16

2020-05-18T20:54:45Z

I didn't complete a single film all week. I did get halfway through The Limey, but my ADHD is just not being my friend these days.

I mainly played Dragon Age: Inquisition and painted D&D minis.

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My Week in Movies: August 4 - 10

2019-08-11T22:20:42Z

Ingmar Bergmania has come to an end. I have worked through the whole boxed set, save some documentaries I'll circle back to eventually. This week's list is much, much shorter.

Films I've seen before (none this week) are in italics.

Waiting Women (1952)
Brink of Life (1958)
Autumn Sonata (1978)
Fanny and Alexander (television version) (1983)
Robocroc (2013) w/sol_se
The Trouble with Angels (1966)

At one point watching Autumn Sonata, I said out loud, "This is brutal." And it is. It's a mother and a daughter in a room, talking out their painful pasts, and it's one of the most brutal things I've ever seen on film. It made me think of my relationship with my own father and how we bear the scars of our parental conflicts for our entire lives, until they become larger than the conflicts themselves.

Fanny and Alexander is the cherry on the top of Ingmar Bergman's filmography. Although he would continue to work in television for the next 20 years, his work would never again have this kind of scope and opulence. It's a lovely, semiautobiographical tale of navigating childhood with your imagination both as boon and bane. It has a touch of magical realism to it, enough that one can't call it a straight drama, but not enough that one could properly place it in the fantasy genre. It also has one of the most loathsome villains I've ever seen on the screen.

Fanny and Alexander ended the Bergman-stravaganza. I switched over to playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider after that.

My weekly movie date with sol_se involved a Syfy creature feature called Robocroc, starring Corin Nemec and Dee Wallace. It was delightfully awful.

However, my PS4 had a little temporary meltdown last night, so I watched Ida Lupino's The Trouble with Angels, which is a charming tale of mischief in a nun-run girls' school. Rosalind Russell is amazing as always. I'm annoyed that the ending made me teary because overall the film hadn't earned its major plot development, but whatever. I'm a softie.

Expect the next few weeks to be extremely light on the cinema as I play through SotTR.

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Fannish Check-in

2016-05-16T02:19:14Z

I don't actually *journal* here much anymore, which is silly. I like you all, I assume that you all like me (or are secretly plotting my doom, in which case, good luck with that, let me know how it turns out) and may have some interest in what's going on with me. The answer is, in terms of actual life things, not much. However, I have media that I've consumed. So I'll go over that.

( So here's what I've been up to in bullet points: )

That's about everything, except anything I forgot or didn't feel was notable enough to bring up.

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VID: Madhouse (Psychonauts)

2015-08-12T02:10:00Z

Title: Madhouse
Song: Madhouse by Little Mix
Source: Psychonauts
Length: 3:49
Warnings: Physical triggers
Made for: absolutedestiny

Summary: A mind is a terrible thing to face.

Vimeo password: razputin

Madhouse on Vimeo.

Download MP4 (right/ctrl-click and "Save as...")

Notes: Premiered at Vividcon Challenge 2015 (Memory). This is my first video game vid ever. I started it a couple of years ago for Festivids in response to a request from absolutedestiny . I kept tinkering with it even after I missed that deadline. Eventually, I finished it. Obviously. So here we are.

While some of the video used here was captured on my Mac, most of it was sourced from Denny Ayard's Youtube channel. Additional sources include Jetup, Story Gamer, and [a deleted video that is no longer online].

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Quick update...

2013-12-17T05:19:52Z

I want to take a little more time to ponder cesperanza's request about continuity errors, so it's moving to later in the month.

Working on Festivids has been kind of a slog this year, which makes me sad, since I was on fire last year. I am trying to be more... I don't know... forgiving of myself? I suffer from depression and ADHD and I can't compare my productivity at one point in the year to the same point the year previous. It doesn't work that way. I need to accept that.

Also, I am still playing lots and lots of Borderlands 2. And do not get me started on System Shock 2.

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Mass Effect

2013-06-04T02:48:51Z

So, um, I fell down a fannish rabbit hole called Mass Effect. I talked a little about this back in March, but let's just say that I'm on my second playthrough right now. Dude!Shep has grown on me, but I'm still a solid Fem!Shep supporter. I want to go through and do a playthrough where I make all the bad calls and see where that puts me at the end of the game.

And it's not just that I enjoy playing the game. I am obsessive about the universe. The characters, the alien races, the history. The philosophical questions posed by the series and the questions it should be posing. I track things like when characters got a major writing upgrade (Garrus in ME1 was kind of bland, but Garrus in ME2 is AMAZING and I want to be friends forever). I haven't delved into the side media too much, but that's my next stop.

It's been cutting into my vidding time a bit. The further I get into the game, the more I want to play it. It's like a novel where you've become really invested and you just can't put it down. I care about these characters, I care about this universe. I care about the infinite options that spread before me and the consequences of the decisions I make.

Also, I am amazing with a sniper rifle. Boom.

I will take any fic, meta, or vid recs that you folks have. Lay it on me.

I leave you with this clip, which is from the Citadel DLC and the funniest stupid thing I've seen in a while (although it makes more, um, sense if you've played the game):

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Opinion needed, re: Mass Effect 3 add-ons

2013-04-14T00:06:14Z

Just got a $20 credit from the Playstation 3 store. Yay! I'm going to use it to buy some Mass Effect 3 DLC, but I need opinions on which to purchase.

My options are as follows:

The Citadel DLC
Omega DLC
From Ashes & Leviathan DLC together

Thoughts?

Oh, also I am through the ( cut for Mass Effect spoilers )

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Mass Effectiveness

2013-03-20T00:04:23Z

My last entry totally failed to mention what's consuming most of my brain these days -- Mass Effect. Specifically Mass Effect 2. Which, you know, I wasn't super fond of the combat or inventory systems in Mass Effect, but Mass Effect 2 made combat so much harder and also just completely did away with the inventory system entirely, which seems a little extreme.

I complain more about Mass Effect 2, but I'm also playing it more obsessively. Every time I run into someone with whom I formed a relationship in Mass Effect the 1st or receive an email updating me on their status, I get a little shot of serotonin in the brain. I really wish I'd done more side missions in ME1, but I bought into the game's sense of extreme urgency and rushed headlong for the finish line. Not making that same mistake twice.

I need to finish ME2 soon, though, because I have Bioshock Infinite on preorder (digital, download-only preorder -- welcome to the future).

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First World Problems

2011-09-05T03:56:21Z

So I'm prevented from playing any farther through Deus Ex: Human Revolution because I'm currently ahead of where echan is in the game and ze is a spoilerphobe. Every time ze comes into the room and there's plot (and I'm at a point where it's almost all plot or plot-adjacent), hands go to ears and ze goes "Lalalalala." If I remember to warn zir, which I rarely do.

So I have to wait for Echan to catch up.

Echan, I should mention, is a slow, methodical player in a game that rewards slow, methodical players.

This wouldn't really be a problem if the game wasn't so damn good. I kind of feel like I'm in the middle of a cyberpunk novel.

The Deus Ex series: consuming my every waking, non-working minute for the second time in seven years. Dammit.

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