Guston by Robert Storr (9/10)

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Guston book cover.

Philip Guston started as a WPA muralist, then became one of the leading figures of abstract expressionism. He is one of the few abstract expressionists whose work I can stand and I think it’s because figuration was always a lingering presence even when the work was pure abstraction. Eventually he abandons abstraction for what would become his most important and influential work: large, loosely painted cartoons with hints of political meaning. I love this later work and this book features a lot of it in big colorful plates. The writing is very informative and to the point. You’re probably not going to find a better overview of Guston’s life and work.

Crusader of Centy on Genesis (7/10)

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Every couple of years I get back into emulation, mostly as a reaction against some massive open-world game I just spent hundreds of hours playing. This time ’round I enhanced my retro-gaming experience with the purchase of an 8BitDo M30 gamepad which mimics the layout and feel of a six-button Genesis controller.

Crusader of Centy is a Genesis game which I only know from grabbing a pack of a zillion ROMs from the Internet back in the days of the Genecyst emulator. It has the look and feel of a console JRPG but is really a simple action game with some puzzle moments. It’s styled very much after the original Zelda with a top-down view and sword-shooting attacks. Also, if you are looking for a copy on Ebay it will cost you more than a grand.

The overworld view. You are limited to a handful of points.

Unlike many games on the Genesis, Centy is bright and colorful with smooth animation and excellent pixelated character design. Along with the cheery music, this feels more like a Nintendo game than an exercise in x-treme Blast Processing™.

The controls work well for movement and interaction but combat is a bit clunky. Your sword never quite swings fast enough and enemies don’t react to hits other than their sprites blinking. Outside of boss battles, you are better off just avoiding fights since there is no leveling-up or noteworthy loot drops. The main hook of the game is collecting animal friends which give you special powers. You use these powers to get past obstacles and occasionally as specific means of attacking a boss.

Nearing the final boss fight.

All this makes for a very light and casual gaming experience. Unfortunately, there is very little of interest in the overarching plot in the game. At one point there is some time-travel to mix things up, but mostly its going from point A to point B for unspecified reasons. The dialogue is terse and bland and there are no memorable characters. A more developed narrative would have added so much more. Instead we are left with a very pretty but shallow action adventure.

Violent City (7/10)

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I have been looking for this movie for quite some time. I love Charles Bronson and I love Tele Savalas (look at that guy, serioulsy!). As per usual I know about this one from its Ennio Morricone score which evoke all sorts of seedy, urban action. I was a bit taken aback hearing the title theme being played of tranquil shots of Bronson on a Caribbean vacation. For a movie about a city which is violent, a lot of it takes place in a rural countryside. The opening set piece is an exciting car chase and it sets up the expectation that the rest will be balls-on action, but, alas, it is not. The remainder of the film is a slow build-up to the revenge climax which is brief, but very effective in the way it is shot and sounds.

RRR (8/10)

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A wildly entertaining Indian film about a man trying to save his sister from the evil British governor and another who must stop him. They unknowingly become friends and things get awkward. The movie goes on about 45 minutes too long but when it’s going it really kicks it into high gear. The action set pieces are filled with mediocre CGI that you hardly notice because the action is so incredibly inventive. Of course there’s tons of said action, but there’s also a decent story (with some long boring bits), great music, and, of course, a few musical numbers thrown in for the ladies.

The De-Definition of Art by Harold Rosenberg (4/10)

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This one is a collection of art criticism essays from the early 70s. They mostly grapple with the perceived death of painting after the pop art movement. I hated this kind of writing back when I was in art school and it hasn’t really gotten better in my old age. There are a handful of chapters that concentrate on a single artist which I did somewhat appreciate.

A Butcher King’s Love by Landon Knepp (8/10)

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The third book in this series is finally bringing things together for most of our main characters. I am bored by the Yoss “chosen one” storyline in which a uncivilized former slave journeys across the world to do things. That whole thread seems so unrelated and tonally too serious. I’m sure it will all come together eventually. Two more volumes to go?

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (7/10)

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There’s no escaping these superhero movies. I was trapped in rural America with two hours to kill and this was literally the only show in town. I’ll admit I was a curious as to whether Sam Raimi’s style would come through and it does a little here and there. Overall, it’s a fairly blah installment to the Marvel franchise. It wasn’t horrible, but who cares about this stuff anymore? The two seconds of Bruce Campbell squirting mustard in his face was far superior to the endless scenes of actors shooting colored LASER beams out of their hands.

Spider-Man: No Way Home (8/10)

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I don’t really have any attachment to the old Spider-Men movies so the gimmick of bringing back the previous heroes and villains didn’t mean much to me. It does remind us of how cliché superhero movies are as we reminisce about those times when other actors did the exact same things decades ago. But still, the Spider-Man movies were some of the better Marvel films mostly because they keep the kid-centric tone of the comic books. My big complaint is that bringing in this multiverse stuff makes anything possible, which just lowers the stakes of everything.

Caladrius Blaze on PC (7/10)

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For some time now I have been interested in playing various SHMUPs in MAME. Some of the best looking pixel art exists in these titles and, even though I am terrible at them, I’ve spent hours on games like Gun Lock and Raiden. I was looking for a decent PC-based title and got this one off of Steam based on some of the reviews.

Unlike 90s classics of the genre, this one is full-on 3-D. As a result, it really doesn’t look anywhere near as nice as sprite-based shooters. Also unlike those 90s games, this one features character portraits which lose their clothes as they take on more damage. Japanese culture is really weird.

Idiotic aesthetics aside, the game plays pretty well. It is a bullet-hell game so it is beyond my middle-aged reflexes on any setting above easy but I can manage to hold my ground reasonably well on the first few levels. The main gimmick (besides the partial nudity) is that each ship has three special, upgradable shooting modes. The elemental shots will drain as you use them, taking time to refill, but they are the key to survival. The modes range from impenetrable homing missile attacks to a little golden palm tree they sprouts an inch away from your ship and doesn’t do hardly anything.

I have played a few more modern shooters since I got this, and, in hindsight, I think Caladrius is missing a little bit of the excitement of the top-teir SHMUPs. Yet I found it was a good entry point into the genre even if you are not a pervert.