Hey everyone! For the record, I know I am way overdue. I blame this on a mix of procrastination, waiting for movies to come out in Singapore, then waiting for movies to come out on Netflix, then just more procrastionating. In any case, Welcome To TMD's Fourth Annual Movie Awards Part One As usual I'm listing every movie I saw this year. You get the idea. Naturally these are all subjective and it has been a while since I've seen some of them. Enough of an opening, here it is: Legend: º
Essays, Not Rants! 334: Hogwarts Housing I’ve been on a bit of a Harry Potter kick lately. One reason is that LEGO revived the sets based on the movies so I’ve been seeing a lot of it at work. Another is that my girlfriend’s parents got us tickets to see Cursed Child (which is amazing) so there’s that too. Having recalled that J.K. Rowling detailed a magic school based in the US — Ilvermorny — some time ago, and that she described the houses in that school into which students were sorted, I
Now that we can link to, y'know, the whole Web 2.0 thing that happened years ago. So. Me. Elsewhere. Here's my YouTube channel. You can see
I
for
or even a much older video of my response to
. I'll probably post some of them individually. Enjoy reading Essays, Not Rants? Here's the main blog (BZP's just a mirror!) There ya have it. Or me, as the case may be.
Essays, Not Rants! 346: A Normal Teenager Name Lara Jean To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before really feels like a classic 80s teen romcom, except it was made much more recently. It’s delightfully sweet, and has that uncynical honesty that readily calls back to fare like Sixteen Candles or Can’t Buy Me Love. Honestly, this movie is almost an anachronism, but a delightfully refreshing one at that. Now here’s the thing, unlike all those 80s teen romcoms, To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before’s protago
Well, technically three. Sadly, my compatriot in schemes such as these (seen earlier on this blog as Captain America) was away. As such we shall blow more stuff up when he returns. Boom.
I'm gonna be upfront with all of you: my mom is way cooler than yours. I'm not going to detail history (years in India, on a ship, etc) or the fact that she's someone I can have long Skype calls with. Nah, instead I'm gonna do a quote compilation. I'm fully aware this puts me in a fairly dorkish category. But honestly, I don't mind. =P
Essays, Not Rants! 346: Poking Around Games have rules and expectations. If you’re playing a first-person shooter, violence is the expected solution to most problems. A puzzle encountered in an RPG is going to have a solution, though it may be one you need to progress a little further in another direction to be able to solve. The rule of thumb in point-and-click adventures is that everything you can click on and inspect is gonna hold something of interest. Say you’re playing Monkey Island a
Essays, Not Rants! 359: Final Boss A mainstay staple of video games is the final boss. After a number of levels (or dungeons, chapters, what have you) you finally fight the Biggest Baddest Boss, the defeat of which leads to winning the game and the ultimate resolution. It’s the climax of the game, both from a gameplay perspective and narrative one: everything has led to this. It’s important that the Final Boss feels like a Final Boss, though. I love Uncharted 3, but one issue the game has i
Essays, Not Rants! 349: Playing Together Easily the highlight of my time playing Destiny was Vault of Glass. It’s a raid, that is a really difficult mission that requires serious teamwork and a pretty major time investment. It took work to even find a group to play with: I play on the PS4 and didn’t know anyone else who played Destiny. So I had to the internet to find a group who wanted to run Vault of Glass and were okay with bringing someone along who hadn’t done it before (me). It took us
Essays, Not Rants! 280: Trusting The Story I was initially hesitant to watch Dunkirk, given that it seemed like Christopher Nolan being as Nolan-y as possible. Which, after The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar, wasn't terribly enticing. The Dark Knight Rises was long on ideas and short on smooth implementation. Interstellar too had big ideas but lacked the characterization they needed to land. Dunkirk seemed like it could be more of the same: Nolan being self-indulgent to the point of breaki
Essays, Not Rants! 357: Thirteen Or So Years Later I think it was my cousin who turned me in to Kingdom Hearts, years ago, via a ROM of Chain of Memories. It was a novel game, mixing as it did Disney worlds with a Final Fantasy mentality. I played the original PS2 game later and shortly after rented the third game, Kingdom Hearts II from Blockbuster (remember those?) and subsequently bought it. This was all back around the summer of 2006. This past Tuesday, the tenth non-remake game in the
...doesn't mean i get to be Tony Stark. Or does it? Some other stuff I need to finish up too (see below post). Hurry up May 4th! (Also, details on the metal (bar) thing can be found in older blog posts, if you're so inclined. It's probably named something to the effect of TMD VS Heart Disease.)
Essays, Not Rants! 005: You Are Noble Six In my last entry I (somewhat) briefly touched on the notion of video game immersion and storytelling. I said that the biggest advantage of telling a story through a video game was that the player would gain investment in the story due to having that “hey, I’m the hero!” moment. I wanna elaborate on that, explain just how some games do it - and how they’re so much better for it. Mass Effect is an easy go-to example. Right off the bat you’re asked to g
Part Two of TMD's Fourth Annual Movie Awards Yesterday I posted the big movie list. Today's the Awards. As usual we have my rather unusual categories. Now, due to the tardiness of my writing and posting this, I've kinda forgotten a lot of the movies I shortlisted in my head so sometimes I'll just have the winner rather than a bunch of nominees too. —————————— Worst Movie Basically, what sucks. These movies are not so-bad-they're-good, but are so-bad-they're-worse. Nominees: I Am Number Fou
Essays, Not Rants! 353: The Joy of Exploring I continue to be endlessly fascinated by Breath of The Wild’s open world. Since the last time I talked about the game I’ve taken on one more Divine Beast, but I still spend so much of my time exploring Hyrule and trying to find everything. Which of course makes me wonder why I find this wandering so satisfying. I have a completionist streak in me, a part of me that wants to finish everything. Get all the dang feathers in Assassin’s Creed II, unloc
A movie I really wanted to see came out. Sadly, it wasn't showing in Florence. naturally, I figured I'd make the hundred mile trip to see it in Charlotte. Totally worth it. I really liked Blue Like Jazz. If/when I start making movies, and if I ever make a film that can remotely be titled 'Christiany', I intend it to be in the vein of that movie. That is it was a film about faith that focused more on characters and the plot then sermonizing. And it was funny. Real funny. And had a lot of heart.
Essays, Not Rants! 348: The Mythics of Mega Man I cut my teeth on the Mega Man series of video games. Legendary for their difficulty, mastery of the games comes from getting a handle on their mechanics and memorizing stage layouts and the patterns of boss fights. They’re tough, and oh I love them so. Getting through each stage is such a magnificent moment of catharsis; and the good entries in the series are so well designed that victory isn’t because of a lucky break but from actually skill.
