NOTE: This is the first of what I hope will be an ongoing series of posts of humorous quotes and semi-witty byplay from my regular gaming group. At present we are playing Rolemaster and during last night's session the party was flailing away through a swamp filled with nasty critters.
Stephen: I ready my battle ass!
Val: Farts of fury!
Me: My heavy crossbow is named Zelda.
Eric: You named your crossbow?
Me: At least I didn't call it Vera.
Eric: Then it would be Vera Twang.
(Ashley's ranger is repeatedly stabbing a mortally wounded lizard man)
Val: Give it up.
Ashley: I am trying to put it out of it's misery.
Eric: As she scrapes off one scale at a time.
Val (playing a bard and singing):
For a poultice they did barter,
It's a goo thing he's not a martyr.
Eric (the gamemaster, trying to find some papers): And I haven't even been drinking yet.
Fred: I brought you a chocolate stout.
Eric: Oh good. Now where is that xp bonus.
Stephen (aiming his bow at a flock of giant crows): Hey guys, watch this.
Ashley: STOP!
Me: Nothing good ever follows that sentence.
Val (singing as Stephen's character bleeds to death):
La la la, not to be morose,
It looks like death is really close.
Wednesday, September 21, 2016
Monday, September 19, 2016
Admirable "Admiral"
Yes, I have crawled out of my cave to make a blog post. And while it is about a movie, it's not a particularly geeky movie. Unless you are a history geek like me.
Last night on Netflix I watched Admiral, a 2015 Dutch film about Admiral Michiel De Ruyter who consistently beat the British Royal Navy during the Second and Third Anglo-Dutch Wars. The film stars Frank Lammers in the title role and has Charles Dance doing an excellent job as a thoroughly debauched King Charles II of England. There is also a cameo by Rutger Hauer at the beginning of the film as Admiral Maarten Tromp. The film is mostly in Dutch but the scenes taking with Charles are in English.
To a large extent this is a standard biopic, but for Anglo-American audiences not overly familiar with Dutch history it provides a good lesson on the intricacies of the Netherlands' internal politics in the mid-17th century. The film manages to get across the sometimes violent political upheavals of the time between the Republicans and the Orangists without getting bogged down in talking. De Ruyter's friend and patron Johan de Witt seeks to strengthen the merchant class and republican form of government while fighting a series or wars with England while William, the Prince of Orange starts off as a rather ineffectual buffoon being used by the aristocrats while learning to be his own man and a ruler in his own right. Both men are not above using De Ruyter for their own political ends and De Ruyter allows himself to be used because he seems himself as a patriot first. This unfortunately leads to his down fall.
De Ruyter, besides being a Dutch patriot, is portrayed as a loving family man who is constantly caught between duty and family. He also seeks to improve his nation's navy and the lot of the regular sailor. Lammers shows a great emotional range in the complex motives of the man.
This is a film of truly epic scope with multiple naval battle scenes that manage to give a really good impression of just how brutal warfare during the age of sail could be while not falling into the trap of graphic ultra-violence. The cinematography on land is incredibly lush and does an excellent job of evoking the 17th century. And I cannot even begin to praise the production design and costume design in it's overall accuracy. All of this was done on a budget of about eight million euros, so there is a lesson in there somewhere for Hollywood.
Overall I truly loved this film but I have two basic complaints. The first is that the events in it cover a period of 25 years from 1653 to 1678. Now of course you can't cover everything that happened to the major characters. But the film gives no idea that such a large amount of time is covered. At the beginning De Ruyter is a middle aged man with several young children and at the end he is still a middle aged man with young children. No one ages. No changes. Unless one is already somewhat familiar with the era you could come away with the idea that everything is happening over the space of only a couple years.
The other complaint, and this is my history geek coming through, is the English ships are always shown flying the Union Jack. Since this flag didn't exist before the Act of Union between England and Scotland in 1707 it is a very jarring anachronism to me. I'm sure the director thought it would make it easier for a modern audience to keep track of which ship is on which side but this could just as have been done by showing English officers speaking on the deck of a ship flying the Cross of St. George, especially since the Dutch ships were all shown flying the present Dutch tricolor.
Last night on Netflix I watched Admiral, a 2015 Dutch film about Admiral Michiel De Ruyter who consistently beat the British Royal Navy during the Second and Third Anglo-Dutch Wars. The film stars Frank Lammers in the title role and has Charles Dance doing an excellent job as a thoroughly debauched King Charles II of England. There is also a cameo by Rutger Hauer at the beginning of the film as Admiral Maarten Tromp. The film is mostly in Dutch but the scenes taking with Charles are in English.
To a large extent this is a standard biopic, but for Anglo-American audiences not overly familiar with Dutch history it provides a good lesson on the intricacies of the Netherlands' internal politics in the mid-17th century. The film manages to get across the sometimes violent political upheavals of the time between the Republicans and the Orangists without getting bogged down in talking. De Ruyter's friend and patron Johan de Witt seeks to strengthen the merchant class and republican form of government while fighting a series or wars with England while William, the Prince of Orange starts off as a rather ineffectual buffoon being used by the aristocrats while learning to be his own man and a ruler in his own right. Both men are not above using De Ruyter for their own political ends and De Ruyter allows himself to be used because he seems himself as a patriot first. This unfortunately leads to his down fall.
De Ruyter, besides being a Dutch patriot, is portrayed as a loving family man who is constantly caught between duty and family. He also seeks to improve his nation's navy and the lot of the regular sailor. Lammers shows a great emotional range in the complex motives of the man.
This is a film of truly epic scope with multiple naval battle scenes that manage to give a really good impression of just how brutal warfare during the age of sail could be while not falling into the trap of graphic ultra-violence. The cinematography on land is incredibly lush and does an excellent job of evoking the 17th century. And I cannot even begin to praise the production design and costume design in it's overall accuracy. All of this was done on a budget of about eight million euros, so there is a lesson in there somewhere for Hollywood.
Overall I truly loved this film but I have two basic complaints. The first is that the events in it cover a period of 25 years from 1653 to 1678. Now of course you can't cover everything that happened to the major characters. But the film gives no idea that such a large amount of time is covered. At the beginning De Ruyter is a middle aged man with several young children and at the end he is still a middle aged man with young children. No one ages. No changes. Unless one is already somewhat familiar with the era you could come away with the idea that everything is happening over the space of only a couple years.
The other complaint, and this is my history geek coming through, is the English ships are always shown flying the Union Jack. Since this flag didn't exist before the Act of Union between England and Scotland in 1707 it is a very jarring anachronism to me. I'm sure the director thought it would make it easier for a modern audience to keep track of which ship is on which side but this could just as have been done by showing English officers speaking on the deck of a ship flying the Cross of St. George, especially since the Dutch ships were all shown flying the present Dutch tricolor.
Monday, May 23, 2016
Random Thought
Despite it's very questionable politics I am still a fan of Robert Heinlein's "Starship Troopers". Why? Because it involves killing arachnids!
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
Casablanca
On May 1 Madeleine LeBeau, the last living cast member of the film Casablanca, died at the age of 92.
Casablanca is, in my opinion, the greatest movie ever made. Most Anglophone film buffs put it in the top three along with The Godfather and Citizen Kane. There are many elements to why it is a great film including Michael Curtiz's direction, the script with it's snappy, witty dialog, and of course the stellar performances by Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. And I'm pretty much a sucker for anything that has Claude Rains in it.
But what really made the film for me were the performances by the supporting actors like Madeleine LeBeau. In Casablanca she plays Yvonne, Rick's embittered ex-girlfriend who takes up with a German officer. It's a small role but one that has great emotional punch because during the famous Marseillaise scene she cries out "Vive le France! Vive la democracie!"
Casablanca is, in my opinion, the greatest movie ever made. Most Anglophone film buffs put it in the top three along with The Godfather and Citizen Kane. There are many elements to why it is a great film including Michael Curtiz's direction, the script with it's snappy, witty dialog, and of course the stellar performances by Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. And I'm pretty much a sucker for anything that has Claude Rains in it.
But what really made the film for me were the performances by the supporting actors like Madeleine LeBeau. In Casablanca she plays Yvonne, Rick's embittered ex-girlfriend who takes up with a German officer. It's a small role but one that has great emotional punch because during the famous Marseillaise scene she cries out "Vive le France! Vive la democracie!"
She provides that extra oomph that makes an already emotional scene even better. And it is more believable coming from her than possibly some other actress because LeBeau was a wartime refugee.
Casablanca is a story of men and women trying to cope during the horrors of World War 2. Many of the supporting actors in it like LeBeau and her then husband Marcel Dalio, who played Emil the croupier, had fled Nazi occupied Europe for the safety of the United States. It is the verisimilitude of these and other genuine refugees in the small parts of this film that provided it with that little extra something that more than made up for the occasional plot hole.
Monday, May 16, 2016
Buckaroo Banzai versus the Television Executives
The big news today in the geek-o-sphere are the reports that Kevin Smith is in the process of creating an Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai television series.
I meet this news with no small amount of trepidation. I am a very old school fan of Buckaroo Banzai. I was a fan of Buckaroo Banzai before the movie came out. Not many people remember that Earl Mac Rauch's novelization of his script actually hit the bookstores about six months before the film did. And I got a copy and read it several times before the film debuted. Needless to say, it helped make sense of the movie too.
So the thought of a BB television series fills me with both dread and excitement. On one hand it looks like it's going to be written and produced by Kevin Smith and he is the ubergeek's ubergeek. If anyone will treat the original material in a way that fans will appreciate it is him. On the other hand a lot of it is going to depend on which network or cable channel pics it up. Heaven forfend the Fox Network gets their dirty little paws on it. The subject matter is so bizarre they will no doubt treat it in such a manner that Firefly winds up looking like Gunsmoke. And while things have been improving over at SyFy, I still don't trust them to treat original material well I guess time will tell.
I do like Smith's idea of essentially remaking the film so that it is the story arc of the first season. When you read the book there are a lot of ideas and subplots that didn't make it into the film that could easily fill out a whole season. Though I am sad for whoever they cast as Rawhide. Talk about doomed by canon. Also the fact that Smith himself wants to play John Bigbooté (Bigboot-TAY!) is a bit worrisome.
And I really like his idea of doing the non-existent Against The World Crime League sequel for season two, if they get that far. Again Rauch's novelization goes into a fair amount of detail about the WCL and it's leader Hanoi Xan that were not necessary for the film but are a great source of ideas for television episodes.
I think in the end I am cautiously optimistic. Kevin Smith is a fan and he knows how to appeal to fans. Buckaroo Banzai is a franchise with an already built in fan base. The TV series could probably be made on a relatively constrained budget for genre TV since the original film was done on a shoe string and the fans won't expect the most cutting edge special effects. In fact the cheesiness is part of the charm.
So I'm going to keep my fingers crossed and wait for an explanation of why that watermelon is there.
I meet this news with no small amount of trepidation. I am a very old school fan of Buckaroo Banzai. I was a fan of Buckaroo Banzai before the movie came out. Not many people remember that Earl Mac Rauch's novelization of his script actually hit the bookstores about six months before the film did. And I got a copy and read it several times before the film debuted. Needless to say, it helped make sense of the movie too.
So the thought of a BB television series fills me with both dread and excitement. On one hand it looks like it's going to be written and produced by Kevin Smith and he is the ubergeek's ubergeek. If anyone will treat the original material in a way that fans will appreciate it is him. On the other hand a lot of it is going to depend on which network or cable channel pics it up. Heaven forfend the Fox Network gets their dirty little paws on it. The subject matter is so bizarre they will no doubt treat it in such a manner that Firefly winds up looking like Gunsmoke. And while things have been improving over at SyFy, I still don't trust them to treat original material well I guess time will tell.
I do like Smith's idea of essentially remaking the film so that it is the story arc of the first season. When you read the book there are a lot of ideas and subplots that didn't make it into the film that could easily fill out a whole season. Though I am sad for whoever they cast as Rawhide. Talk about doomed by canon. Also the fact that Smith himself wants to play John Bigbooté (Bigboot-TAY!) is a bit worrisome.
And I really like his idea of doing the non-existent Against The World Crime League sequel for season two, if they get that far. Again Rauch's novelization goes into a fair amount of detail about the WCL and it's leader Hanoi Xan that were not necessary for the film but are a great source of ideas for television episodes.
I think in the end I am cautiously optimistic. Kevin Smith is a fan and he knows how to appeal to fans. Buckaroo Banzai is a franchise with an already built in fan base. The TV series could probably be made on a relatively constrained budget for genre TV since the original film was done on a shoe string and the fans won't expect the most cutting edge special effects. In fact the cheesiness is part of the charm.
So I'm going to keep my fingers crossed and wait for an explanation of why that watermelon is there.
Thursday, May 12, 2016
Why yes, I do still exist.
You may have noticed that I haven't posted in six months. Or more likely you haven't noticed because it's not like I had a lot of followers before things tailed off.
At any rate, I'm back. I hope.
I had a bad case of depression over the winter but I think I've finally kicked it. I won't go into too much detail save that I was always tired and there never seemed anything worth writing about.
Also when I started this blog my original intent was to try and write at least one post a day even though I knew that I was tempermentally unsuited to that goal and I quickly found myself running out of things to write about. From now on while I will try and post more often, I am not going to hold myself to any sort of artificial goal. If I have something on my mind I want to post about, great. If not, that's fine too.
So what am I up to now that I've crawled out of my cave? Well I am getting active in science fiction fandom again. The mess that was the latest Hugo nominations list was part of it. (A fuller rant on that subject will be forthcoming.) I'm going to be at BayCon in San Mateo at the end of May if anyone wants to meet up.
I've been getting back into painting historical miniatures again. This time World War One naval minis in the 1:2400 scale. I'm starting off with the British and German ships that fought the Battle of Dogger Bank in 1915.
Here is the HMS Lion. I'm not entirely happy with it as I think I painted the yellow teak deck too gold of a shade but for a first try in a very long time, it's not bad. The nickel is there for a size comparison.
At any rate, I'm back. I hope.
I had a bad case of depression over the winter but I think I've finally kicked it. I won't go into too much detail save that I was always tired and there never seemed anything worth writing about.
Also when I started this blog my original intent was to try and write at least one post a day even though I knew that I was tempermentally unsuited to that goal and I quickly found myself running out of things to write about. From now on while I will try and post more often, I am not going to hold myself to any sort of artificial goal. If I have something on my mind I want to post about, great. If not, that's fine too.
So what am I up to now that I've crawled out of my cave? Well I am getting active in science fiction fandom again. The mess that was the latest Hugo nominations list was part of it. (A fuller rant on that subject will be forthcoming.) I'm going to be at BayCon in San Mateo at the end of May if anyone wants to meet up.
I've been getting back into painting historical miniatures again. This time World War One naval minis in the 1:2400 scale. I'm starting off with the British and German ships that fought the Battle of Dogger Bank in 1915.
Here is the HMS Lion. I'm not entirely happy with it as I think I painted the yellow teak deck too gold of a shade but for a first try in a very long time, it's not bad. The nickel is there for a size comparison.
I'm doing a fair amount of board and role-playing gaming. I'm sure this will provide plenty of subjects for posts going forward.
And with the US presidential campaign entering the general election phase you can expect a fair amount of politics from me. You've been warned.
That's if for now. Until I return, please enjoy the Anonymous Orange (tm) that I received in the mail earlier this week.
Monday, November 2, 2015
New Star Trek! New Star Trek?
Yes, I am actually crawling out of my hole to post again. Of course given today's news how could I not?
I case you've been living under a rock this morning the big news news in geekdom is the official announcement of a brand new Star Trek series premiering in January 2017.
On the surface I can certainly understand why folks are all aflutter. But what do we know about it at this time? Not a whole lot.
It's being produced by Alex Kurtzmann who co-wrote the J.J. Abrams' reboot films. Unlike many people I rather liked Abrams' take on the Federation. Yes it has issues but then so does the old Roddenberry / Paramount continuity. The only thing press release tells about the series itself is:
That's not a lot to go on.
Many people are working under the assumption that since Kurtzmann is the show runner it's going to be in the Abrams-verse. But that's making a big leap on not a lot of information. In fact because it is going to be a CBS series it more strongly points to being tied in to the old continuity since CBS owns those rights but not the new one's.
There has been some serious talk in the past year (including from Michael Dorn himself) of a Captain Worf series. I could certainly see that happening as it will allow for the introduction of a ship full of new characters led by an old and beloved one from two previous series. If they go back to the classic TOS and Next Gen formula of a starship crew exploring the universe without any of the other hooks from the other series it could be a very good idea.
But now I am also speculating without data. Or Data, for that matter.
The thing I find most disturbing about the whole project is the thing the press release discusses the most, namely that after the premier episode the program is going to be on CBS's pay streaming site. Aside from the fact that I didn't know that CBS had a site I'm not sure how good of a strategy this is for them. I can see their logic, create a new show with a built in fan-base, but it on-line and count the money as it rolls in. That's good for them in theory but until I know and see more, I am going to be very leery about paying six dollars a month just to watch a new Trek series.
I case you've been living under a rock this morning the big news news in geekdom is the official announcement of a brand new Star Trek series premiering in January 2017.
On the surface I can certainly understand why folks are all aflutter. But what do we know about it at this time? Not a whole lot.
It's being produced by Alex Kurtzmann who co-wrote the J.J. Abrams' reboot films. Unlike many people I rather liked Abrams' take on the Federation. Yes it has issues but then so does the old Roddenberry / Paramount continuity. The only thing press release tells about the series itself is:
The brand-new Star Trek will introduce new characters seeking imaginative new worlds and new civilizations, while exploring the dramatic contemporary themes that have been a signature of the franchise since its inception in 1966.
That's not a lot to go on.
Many people are working under the assumption that since Kurtzmann is the show runner it's going to be in the Abrams-verse. But that's making a big leap on not a lot of information. In fact because it is going to be a CBS series it more strongly points to being tied in to the old continuity since CBS owns those rights but not the new one's.
There has been some serious talk in the past year (including from Michael Dorn himself) of a Captain Worf series. I could certainly see that happening as it will allow for the introduction of a ship full of new characters led by an old and beloved one from two previous series. If they go back to the classic TOS and Next Gen formula of a starship crew exploring the universe without any of the other hooks from the other series it could be a very good idea.
But now I am also speculating without data. Or Data, for that matter.
The thing I find most disturbing about the whole project is the thing the press release discusses the most, namely that after the premier episode the program is going to be on CBS's pay streaming site. Aside from the fact that I didn't know that CBS had a site I'm not sure how good of a strategy this is for them. I can see their logic, create a new show with a built in fan-base, but it on-line and count the money as it rolls in. That's good for them in theory but until I know and see more, I am going to be very leery about paying six dollars a month just to watch a new Trek series.
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