Another gaping hole from my 80s cinema to-do list. The premise is extremely cheesy and the execution isn’t much better, but it manages to surprise and entertain just enough. For a movie that I have always thought was considered quintessential eighties action, there really is not much action in it. Just a bunch of running, a wrestling match, a tiny bit of gun play, and several dated looking SFX sequences.
I did not like this nearly as much as The Righteous Mind, but there are a handful of decent insights here about so-call “outrage” culture and where it comes from. The style is almost like a high school essay. Each chapter opens with them saying what they are about to say, then saying it, and finally recapping what was just said. You could easily just read the end-chapter bullet points and feel like you’ve read and understand the concepts of the book.
It’s been years since I read me some Poirot and it was refreshing to dive back in. I am a better mystery reader now, and I almost solved this one. A rich heiress is murdered on yet another trans-European train ride and Poirot goes to the French Riviera to seek out clues. Things happen and the case get solved!
The historical fiction version of A Feast for Crows with the church versus the crown. It’s a thick but quick-paced read with a lot of detailed accounts of building a cathedral and a lot of overly detailed rape scenes. Ken Follett is definitely a perv.
Korean fast-zombie movie that is largely bloodless but manages to remain entertaining to the end. Dad takes his daughter on a train ride to his ex-wife and, without explanation, zombies are everywhere. There’s no attempt to take advantage of the train setting with awesome stunts, but, whatever, it works.
Dueling clans seek to attain the highest level of kung-fu: silkworm style. The fighter literally shoots out webs of silk and creates a battle cocoon, but you don’t get to see this until the climax. The rest of the fights aren’t quite as crazy but they are overwhelmingly magical (as opposed to the grounded technique of a Gordon Liu). The flying, spinning wire-fu is the main appeal here but leaves the story and characters to be forgotten. They even drop the whole dueling clans plot-line for the last act of the picture.
A good collection of political writings spanning from Hobbes to Marx. Hobbes and Locke lay down a nice foundation for what follows. “On Liberty” remains a personal favorite for me and very applicable to today. This is the second time I’ve read it and I can’t recommend it enough. Adam Smith was very informative and readable, but not necessarily political. Hegel was an incomprehensible word salad. “The Communist Manifesto” was okay in the early bit when he talked about all the awesome stuff the bourgeoisie created, but descends into hateful, envious and downright evil garbage pretty quickly. I can’t believe people buy in to Marx. He is awful.
So far, my favorite of the MOTU series. I think I liked this one because there is some grounding in reality. The pyramids exist, Stonehenge exists, the Nazca glyphs exist. There’s quite a bit of real history here before it veers off into la la land. To be completely honest, a lot of the wacko theories about these ancient monuments are pretty fun to read about and enough of the real facts are there to let you make up your own mind. Sadly, Shirley Temple does not play a role in solving any of the ancient mysteries.
The third game in the Fallout series eschews much of its RPGness and concentrates on combat instead. I always liked the turn-based fights in the first two Fallout games, but there’s something off about the way the system was implemented here. I was having the hardest time getting through the early levels and eventually gave up at one point. I finally came back to the game after having read that the way to play is to ignore the turn-based system and instead use the real-time mode instead.
Apparently, the designers all along intended this to be a real-time combat game and never really tested the other system. It shows. The real-time combat is much faster and more forgiving. Managing your party can get a bit overwhelming, but it pays to set up hot key groupings and moving your team around as two or three squads rather than six independent characters. For the most part, I enjoyed the game once I made this shift. The only thing missing was the pause and order mechanic that Infinity Engine games used. That would have come in very handy in many of the intense fights near the end of the game. in which I ended up having to switch back to turn-based mechanism to win.
Despite the narrower focus, Fallout Tactics is a pretty huge game. It took me around fifty hours to get through it. This is a lot more than even most modern RPGs allocate, and that’s also a lot of time to spend playing with little to no narrative payoff. There is a story which slowly develops from mission to mission, but it lacks the depth and character of a real Fallout game. I’m glad I played it, but now I am much more excited to dig into the tactical battles of the forthcoming Wasteland 3. The modern Wasteland games are more Fallout than Fallout Tactics.
This movie shouldn’t be as enjoyable as it was, but I found myself entertained throughout. It’s basically the type of 60s film that Austin Powers was parodying. A legion of beautiful women seek world domination and it’s up to two unlikely agents to thwart their plans. One of those agents is Frankie Avalon who is often making self-referencing jokes about his situation (“Is this where I am supposed to sing?”). The other hero is a middle-aged man who, despite his wrinkly face, can’t keep the young girls from lusting after him. It’s all goofy fun and was nice to see all the same Shaw Bros. sets used in something other than Kung-Fu.
