Rogue Trading 3

While repairing our ship at Footfall, some of our crew stirred up trouble in the local population, which caused us grief. Finding the perpetrator wasn't too much of a problem for our Seneshal, leaving us only with the option of what to do with him. Death quick and easy? Long and painful? Eventually, we decided to garner favour with the locals by handing him over to them for their justice. The little tick should be glad we didn't do worse to him.

With the ship repaired, we continued out to our destination of Magoros, and found there two planets, one icy, one desert, and a ring of asteroids. Visiting the ice planet first, we found the remains on an ork ship crashed into xeno-archaic ruins, and in those ruins the remains of a power grid that was beaming remnants of power to the other planet.

Switching planets, we tracked the beam to the north pole, but couldn't land there due to turbulent air, so settled down and had to walk in (not a particularly pleasent experience for me). Nearing the goal, some kind of ruin, we came across the woman who had attempted to steal from us earlier, now caught up in a squabble with some orks. We were tempted to leave her to it, but then decided it would be good for her to owe us a favour.

There were, however, very many orks. While others took pot shots, I tried to go in an intimidate them with my mighty Navigator-ness [go Lidless stare]. I did quite well with a first glaring, that I tried to do it again... but over-exerted myself and passed out. However, I was only the first of many to do so, with one of my shipmates doing so instead of dying [bye-bye Fate Point]. And, indeed, the woman we came to rescue ended up no more. With all but one of us down for the count, the one remainder drew the orks away, leaving us to be scooped up by the Teleportarium...

[That fight was rather unbalanced. Indeed, the whole adventure hasn't been that good. It's an example adventure, designed to show off various parts of the system. So far it's called for a lore skill none of us have (and can only be gotten if you happen to pick the right background option). It's put us in ship-to-ship combat that nearly destroyed us (with some initial excellent rolls from the GM). And then it put us up against twelve armoured, unnaturally tough creatures. Frankly, TPK was well possible... I hate to see what the final fight/scene will be!]

[But I will say that having now seen the Critical Hit tables, they are very amusing, and remind me of the Rolemaster ones...]

[END]

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Wanting to Want to Believe

No, it doesn't take me weeks to read the next Torchwood book. Instead, I've been distracted by reading a tome by Robert Shearman. All about his opinions of the X-Files.

This isn't a discontinuity guide of any kind. There are episode synopses, written by Lars Pearson, but the point of the book is an opinion piece by Shearman for every X-Files episode. And every Millennium episode. And every Lone Gunman episode. All as a lead to review The X-Files: I Want To Believe movie.

This makes for very entertaining reading. Shearman is good at writing reviews, and could easily produce many volumes of his reviews for Doctor Who. (A small sampling of those were published in previous TSVs.) Hopefully, the full set will see the light of day some time...

As every, with reviews, I don't agree with everything he says, but he does make many insightful comments, and certainly you'll see many episodes in a new light. Not that, admittedly, I'm wanting to rewatch the series again, but if I ever do...

Definitely a book to pick up if you want to read reasoned thinking about every episode of a groundbreaking series.

[END]

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Prestigious

Since this was recommended during my science fiction movie education, I finally got around to checking out The Prestige. The premise? Wolverine and Batman face off in the grudge match fight of the century we've all been waiting for. [Now, there's slash fiction I don't want to know about!]

Well, maybe not those two characters, but certainly it's Hugh Jackman versus Christopher Bale, as two magicians who snipe at each other after one of them leads to the death of the wife of the other. (And, while watching it, it is pretty clear what those circumstances were.) The back and forth goes on, as they try to one-up each other magically, finally leading to the greatest trick of all of going in one door and out the other.

(To be honest, it wasn't that hard to work out what was going on. Certainly, I picked up on it pretty early on, and far before the final "reveal" which told me nothing new.)

The problem I had with this movie was that neither of the two leads were likable, so I wasn't rooting for one of them to win out over the other. The movie gets pretty obvious as to who the hero is supposed to be by the end, but I'm not accepting it. Frankly both men got their hands dirty, so there is definitely no moral ground to be had, and it's only because of one of them having a familial connection that we are meant to take that connection as the win.

In all, the movie takes far too long to get to the big revelation, which the audience is already ahead of, and the ending leaves a bad taste in the mouth anyway. Watch with caution.

[END]

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Would I Lie To You?

A world where no-one lies does give rise to some interesting possibilities. We do get a lot of social interactions which are amusing as people spend most of their time with facial observations, but it's really typified by the television. Ads are truthful, but there are no programs which are not documentaries, most of which are presented by someone reading the information (as there can be no actors pretending to be people they are not).

But I do wonder how humanity could have reached basically the present age like that. Mating rituals can't have developed into dating, and people know immediately if there is a chance or not, and given the number of arguments people get into anyway when the truth is involved, people would have to have been far more forgiving that given here.

However, given this world, we get the one chap who can lie. ("Invention"? Or "discovery"? Or "development"? Or "The genetic aberration that leads to the ability"... but that one might be a bit long.) What we get is, given this is only a 90 minute movie, some quick indications of what might happen. More interesting television for one. And more social lubricant along the lines of platitudes... which leads to a different take on religion.

Ultimately, this is still a movie that is a romantic comedy, so we have to see the two leads get together. However, there is a huge flaw with this movie, in that "truthness" is associated with "stupidity", and so the only rounded character is Mark (Ricky Gervais) and everyone else seems like a moron, including the lead Anna (Jennifer Garner), so that anyone would want to be with her other than for physical reasons (and the truth talking people do indicate that is the only reason to want her) is an ask too much. Thus, the basic template falls.

Ricky Gervais movies tend to be a bit of a struggle to get into, and while they can be enjoyed superficially, there is a lack of ultimate depth. This one is no exception.

[END]

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Target Australia: 2025

Have you seen the work the Taskforce 2025 has come up with? They are looking at closing the GDP gap between us and Australia (ranking wise) by the year 2025.

They have a number of recommendations, which can be found in summary in their Summary Report. The basic idea is: less taxes, but commensurately less spending by the Government.

Highlights include:

* Cuts to health, including cuts to subsidizing doctor visits and prescription drugs.
* Cuts to subsides in education.
* Pushing out New Zealand Superannuation.

* All tax rates (personal, company, trust) to 20%.

* Government to sell off services if they are in a competitive market.

* The 90 Day probationary period for new employees to be pushed out to 12 months.

Really? This might be what we need to do, but is this a good thing from the "average Joe" perspective? More costs to education and doctors. More chance for the private sector to price hike. More chance for the private sector to use disposable people...

To be honest, if some of these are implemented, I'm thinking "political suicide". But take a look at the documents and decide for yourselves.

[END]

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Imagine Doctor Parnassus

Big fan of Terry Gilliam, so definitely had to check out his latest pic. Love Brazil, but have to admit not much love for The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen. And, unfortunately, this movie is more the latter than the former.

The concept of the movie is that the Master came to Logopolis and silenced all the Logopolitans. (Seriously, this is totally the same plot.) In this case, the Monitor goes on to have many rematches against the Master, and finally ends up with a kid that he makes a final bargain over to save her from him (much like Nyssa!). The bet involves creating Block Transfer Computation realities and seeing if people can see their way through the recursive occlusions. Or something like that.

Christopher Plummer spends a lot of time hidden behind his false beard, Andrew Garfield hasn't heard of subtlety, Verne Troyer has fun, Lily Cole has a rather thankless role to act, but Tom Waits steals every scene (even ones he's not in!).

Okay, let's talk Heath Ledger. Not that impressed by his performance, prefer his previous role. And as for the other Heath Ledgers, Johnny Depp is good, Colin Firth is all right, but Jude Law is the least Heath Ledger of them all.

But what we really want to see are gloriously hugely imagined set pieces, and the movie takes far too long to get there and doesn't have enough of them. Frankly, I want more Gilliam here, but don't think I got enough.

Definitely have to see this on the big screen, but I'm not going to rate this as the best Gilliam movie ever. (That's stil Brazil.)

[END]

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That Was It

Work was over, it was cheap, had a good review, so I popped by the cinema to check out the last ever Michael Jackson work This is It.

And this is as close as I'll ever get to an MJ concert. Basically, it is the rehearsal footage, edited together with the filmed sequences, to replicate a filmed concert experience of the intended concert. In that regards, it works. It also has scattered about various brief clips of the various performers saying how excited they are to be working with MJ.

Say what you like (and his nose did keep distracting me), the man knew how to put on a concert. And had a lot of energy, keeping up with various other performer who were likely half his age. (That said, he's not the only 50 something putting on concerts with younger dancers.)

It would definitely have been an impressive performance, with various classic pieces, including a tribute to the Jackson 5, and a nice slowed down remix of "The Way You Make Me Feel".

If you like MJ, or at least don't mind him, or want to see a concert come together, this is an entertaining way to spend two hours.

[END]

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