Stanley has a Parable

Hmm... I never talked about the Half-Life Mod of The Stanley Parable... But since it's now been released as a full game, now why not?

The tricky part is to talk about it without spoiling bits... 'cos it's not that complicated a game, so you can easily complete it (there's a speed run achievement for doing it in 4 minutes and 20 seconds - got it!), but the point is you have a choice. You have lots of choice. And the game expects you to take that choice. But... do you really have choice?

This is the game of player agency that you play when you want to really think about player agency.

And have a laugh. There were so many great bits that I just had to pause and laugh (and applaud) because it is so well scripted, you have to bow to it.

The conceit is that you are playing Stanley, who finds himself in an empty office. What happened? Can you get through the game, solve all the puzzles, and find out? Can you choose to? Can you choose not to?

Okay, this isn't a commentary on it so much as it is an advert, but go play the game, it's great!

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I've Been Watching

Much like a lot of other people, I've been watching something many haven't seen for a long time... the 1936 Olympic Games! Or, possibly, The Enemy of the World. One or the other.

This is rather a good story! Having only read the book (and maybe once seen the, at the time, one remaining episode), I didn't have a high opinion of this. But it does quite move along (unlike the hovercraft). We get nicely to the conceit of Salamander being a double for the Doctor, and Patrick is clearly got this other character down, if I may, pat. (I did, before, thought he acted like a similar character in Brother Hood, but not really.)

Although episode four does go rather bizarre with this rather sudden introduction of the whole underground business. Before it was political machinations, and then the plot serves into decidedly science fiction territory without much warning. I'm not sure how people at the time took it. I'd also be interested to know how many people thought it was the Doctor who turned up at the end (although only for a little while).

[I'm going to get to this story in Running Through Corridors soon, so no doubt there'll be references to not being able to watch this that we can now all laugh jovially about.]

I had a big grin after watching this. Now if there was another story to follow it...

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RIPpeD

Hey, you liked Men in Black, right? Well, how about a remake of that with dead guys instead of aliens!

Nick is... well, not a good cop, but a not crap cop, so when he dies he's enrolled as an MIB... I mean, a member of Rest In Peace Department, with partner Roy. And, as it typical with these sorts of movies, immediately gets involved in dealing with his killer as part of his first 'case'. And, as is also typical with these sorts of movies, the big bad is something really big so they can be all important and save the world, etc.

Yeah, it's not at all innovative. I hope the comic is a lot better, but this feels very smoothed out to appeal to the masses. Where it needs to impress most is in the creature effects... and they rely a little too much on CGI for it to be believable. And the comedy is not exactly on the high brow side either.

Ryan Reynolds is Nick, the naive one who nonetheless knows drive the story forward emotionally. Jeff Bridges is playing Roy, in cowboy mode turned up to 11, and often rather unintelligible with his speech. Kevin Bacon gets the bad guy role, but doesn't stretch himself for the part.

A by the numbers take on the idea. Could be better. Could be worse... but definitely could be better.

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Zorld Zar W

I haven't read the book (I know, shocking!), so I can assess the movie as a separate identity.

In this quest movie, zombies happen, so Garry has to go to various places around the world and find the hidden secret items that point to the conspiracy that caused the assassination of JFK... no wait, that's something else. Instead, Garry travels the world, bringing misery to everywhere he visits as zombies immediately overwhelm every place he goes to. Seriously, I know this has to be an action movie, but zombies occur everywhere Garry is, so assumptions are made...

Meh, it's zombies. Never going to be that interesting. I know a lot of people disparage a lot about this movie, but since I don't know the book, it works fine as a meh zombie movie. Even the ending solution... whatever. Sure, why not? I've seen worse. The worst part is the family aspect of Garry that plays no relevance after about the first quarter of the movie.

Brad is there, needing a haircut, and a lot of other people are in this movie, but frankly most of them die, so don't bother remembering who they are. The zombie makeup is nice enough, but the CGI is really obvious.

This is (I supposed) an expensive zombie movie, but doesn't do anything really exciting.

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Paranormal Assylum

I watch a lot of stupid movies in search of rare gems... and this was an incredibly stupid movie.

Two guys want to find out about Typhoid Mary, who was at some asylum, so they set up equipment there (really? who leaves these places around with electricity on and everything?) and immediately capture ghosts and strange activity that they acknowledge and also dismiss... okay. And the fiancée of one of the guys is a cod psychic, who gets possessed really easily, and the guy completely refuses to believe there's anything bad. And then the ending happens in which everything goes to crap because this movie is just random.

Seriously. This movie just has random moments strung together for no reason than... because the writer wanted to shove as much weird things as possible without regard for coherency? Also there are a lot of screen effects, which when filmed by the guys is sort of fine, but also happens in non-filmed reality, so there's no excuse for that, but it's still there! Because it's cool and spooky? Nope.

This film stars the rather hansom 'not Josh Holloway' Aaron Mathias and a bunch of rather inexpensive day raters? The effects are decent enough, expect the Mary make up, which was over the top and not at all scary. And I don't know what the editor was on when choosing when to make cuts, but that's not how to do it.

In all, a complete mess of a movie, and well deserving its low rating.

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Thunderbirds go go go go go go!

Yes, I watched the Thunderbirds movie! Okay, so a Thunderbirds movie, but does anyone want to talk about that live action thing?

In this movie (the last puppet based movie, now I've read the trivia), Brains helps design a new airship with anti-gravity technology (pro-tip: gravity doesn't work like in this movie). Immediately, it is taken over by the bad guys in an extremely long game that seems really pointless. The airship, with some members of International Rescue on board, take a two month sight seeing tour (so the bad guys are posing as captain and stewards the entire time - I'm sure "join the bad guys and be a waiter" was an excellent recruiting strategy) while they record snippets of dialogue to fake a call to IR. Meanwhile Brains is working on designs for the new Thunderbird 6, but the fake message sees him get involved in the final climax in which the air ship is poised on top of a pole... and finally, we have the unveiling of the new Thunderbird 6!

As this is 90 minutes long, we get a chance that isn't part of the usual episodes... to have really long pointless scenes with nothing happening but a lot of padding shots of air craft flying around. This could easily have been trimmed down to a tighter paced movie, but they had shots of the models, and by damn they were going to use them!

Still, while I'm not a TB aficionado, it was nice to see them all in action, even if TB 3 and 4 only get mentioned in the opening, and 5 is a brief cameo. The action (when there is action) is well done, and these people certainly know how to get the puppets to do their things by now.

This may be 45 years old, but it still holds up, and indeed is better than, many of today's movies.

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Mononoke-Hime

I remember going out with friends to a packed theatre when I saw this movie, which was one of few anime movies in a film festival. And the instant we saw them, we all wanted kodama toys... And having watched some Legend of Korra recently, I wanted to check it out again.

This is one of those classic progress of man (or rather woman) vs nature. Progress has unbalanced nature and it is running amok, leading Ashitaka to become cursed and wanting to find the source. Which he does in the form of Lady Eboshi and her ironworks, taking from the land and making guns. Opposed to her are the animals of the forest, the wolf and boar clans, and the main wolf's 'daughter' San. (Interestingly, in the Japanese version, Moro is male, but for the English version, Moro is female.) Lady Eboshi wants to kill the Deer God and claim the forest, but that doesn't go very well...

It's a Miyazaki film, so of course it is great! Great characterisation, wonderful creature designs, and a spiritual movie that awes as much as it provokes discussion. While the English version has some big names, I prefer to go for the Japanese version (because I'm a snob - or because I can then speed up the video and watch the subtitles without getting distracted by hearing the dialogue - even if the subtitles had some rather interesting errors).

If you haven't seen it... why not? Go and see this!

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