After Exotic Creatures Sparks kinda disappeared into collaborations, Swedish operas, and Hollywood musicals. Six or seven years later they finally returned in proper form with Hippopotamus. This release continues more along the same lines as the aforementioned Exotic Creatures with a large sampling of quirky pop-rock songs. Sonic experimentation would be reserved for their soon-to-come musical, Annette, with mixed results. Overall, I think this record is much, much more hit than miss (Sparks always have the potential for catastrophic failure). “Edith Piaf (Said It Better Than Me),” “Scandinavian Design,” and “I Wish You Were Fun” are each great tracks and there about a half-dozen more that are almost as good. My pre-order copy included a one-sided 7″ of the title track. What’s more punk rock than a one-sided 45?
This is probably the definitive guide to the history and process of mezzotint printing. There are tons of images and the technical information is exhaustive. If you want to learn how to make mezzotints, this is your best resource. Unfortunately, the actual history of the process is not terribly interesting. It’s mostly a laundry list of various publishers who were focused on copying others’ work rather than exploring the process on its own merits.
Cool story: I own a copy of one of Carol Wax’s mezzotint prints entitled Remington Striptease.
This is an excellent and diverse compilation of music from various (mostly) 70s horror films and thrillers. There are all the usual suspects—Ennio Morricone, Bruno Nicolai, and Riz Ortolani—but there is also many composers that I don’t know much about. Most of the tracks have a rock or jazz feel with only a couple of exceptions that feature more conventional soundtrack orchestrations. The highlight of the album is the super-funky closing track by Daniele Patucchi called, “Minaccia sulla città.”
When this record was released there was a fantastic marketing campaign that featured a black-gloved killer’s POV of him (or her) opening the boxed edition of the album.
The second Legend of Grimrock takes the retro dungeon crawl mechanics that worked so well in the first game and expands them into an open world RPG experience. You are still confided to the grid, but now that grid is decorated with a variety of natural environments and dungeon types.
While much of the game remains the same, there is a greater emphasis on puzzles. I generally enjoyed the environmental challenges that relied on exploration and trial-and-error. There are, however, a number of riddle-based puzzles which I was not as keen on. Maybe I’m just a big dummy because found myself turning to the Internet to get past a few of these.
If you are not familiar with games like Dungeon Master, the combat can seem weird. You are constantly shuffling back-and-forth to avoid damage, but still clicking characters in a turn-based style to fire off attacks. Casting spells becomes a frantic race to draw symbols on the screen, move around, and maintain the health of your other characters. It’s weird, but I find it very satisfying and would highly recommend trying this series out.
The entire movie feels like a slick commercial for a luxury car. In fact, there may be more convincing action sequences in an Infiniti Q50 advert. The gun fighting, which is 95% of the movie, is boring and devoid of any stakes or tension. Why do people love this garbage? Fool me three times, John Wick!
Yes, it’s a very good Godzilla movie but it’s not quite the revelation that many reviewers are making it out to be. The difference here between this and most every other film in the series is that the human story is much, much more interesting than the actual monster scenes. The post WWII setting also gives it a deeper relevance than when Godzilla fought Monster Zero.
This engraving started out as two engravings on a pair of maple wood scraps. I worked on these with the intention of combining them into a single image by pasting them to s single sheet of heavy-duty somerset printmaking paper. This allowed me to have the ease of printing the light rice paper, while having a sturdy end product. Also, because they came from the same tree branch, the shapes provided a nice visual symmetry,
The sixth Expanse novel is the last of the series that was adapted for the show. The biggest problem with the story is that the main adversary, Marco Inaros, is not a terribly interesting villain. The ring and the potential of alien civilizations beyond it are put on the backburner while humanity keeps getting caught up in never-ending in-fighting.
Technically this is just an expansion pack for Ion Fury, but this is a full-game’s worth on content. The most notable additions are the new weapons, monster types, and a “rotorcycle” vehicle. The vehicle levels were the weakest part of the game for me. I’m just not a fan of the racing style combat. But everything else is pure 90s shooter fun that fits in nicely with this already excellent game.
On a quick nostalgia kick I went back and replayed this, the first Sega Genesis game I ever played. I think this was the pack-in game for the Genesis and it seems an odd choice. At the time it was technologically impressive but the game itself is not terribly exciting. It’s a side-scrolling fighting game in which the main challenge is figuring out the best attacks (kick or punch, that’s it) against the various enemies. The game really comes down to rote memorization.
The most exciting part is collecting the metamorphosis powerups that transform your character into a werewolf, dragon, werebear, or tigerman. Furries, rejoice! Once you transform you’ll become fairly invulnerable and you soon face a stage boss. Most of these bosses can be beaten with attacks that feel like cheap exploits. For example, move in close and spam the electric-shock button and the eyeball thing dies is seconds.
As flawed as the game is, I still enjoy playing it if only to experience the joy of kicking things while wearing jockey shorts.
