Battle Tech Getting a Campaign going and What to Do Once We Get There
So we are apparently going to be doing a battletech league game this summer. I like the game enough to do this for sure. After this, when traffic has calmed down, I’ll be spending money at Kinko’s and printing out some maps and tokens for use with Btech. From somewhere I will be ordering another map set. I already have the 25th anniversary boxed set, and a copy of total warfare on the way which has all sorts of additional rules for our fine fun little game. I think we are all going to be playing unusually well armed periphery powers in the year 3039 just before the clan invations. What this means is that we will be limited in, mech design options and weaponry. This is something I am okay with. The other thing is that most of my players don’t have access to the game background like I do. If they did everyone would want to play a clan, and I am seriously down with running a clan leauge sometime in the future. But all the houses, the star league, and other stuff well I am having a hard time keeping it all straight and just telling my players to pick a house and off we go just isn’t going to work. So we are going to be periphery powers fighting over the resources in this certain very useful solar system. What I think will happen is that we will all either pick or design a flagship mech which is what our personal charecters will drive (mine is the king crab!) and then we will determine the rest of the forces randomly as per the rules in total warefare.
That is the thing about this game. It doesn’t do balance. It tries, it may pretend. But it really doesn’t. Like if you were to put up a Banshee against an Atlas the Banshee is going to pretty much gaurnteed loose. And yet they are in the same wieght class and they are near each other in build point values. In the random force organization rules these could be pitted against each other and that means you are just going to have to hope for some miricles. In this way the game is pretty much a direct throwback to an earlier time when games weren’t all clinical and about “fairness”. When someone was explaining Battletech to me over a forum it was explained that it simulateds a war. This is as in an actual for real war. This means that a single lucky shot can eliminate one of your mechs, or that you will be pitted against overwhelming forces, or that things will shake out in such a way that isn’t entirely fair. These things all happen in the game and it is more about playing the game rather than putting two equal forces across from each other and moving them around until one side or the other is dead. I gotta say that I approve of this message. I’ve played a lot of minature games, including the MechWarrior clix varient put out by wiz kids games and none of them have managed to capture the actual feel of battletech. Your mechs are able to take incredible amounts of damage before being finally put down and while sometimes cover is vital, other times you can just freely stalk out into the open and let they try and take you down. Even the mighty assaultmechs require a turn or two of concentrated fire before they are able to bring down a lowly medium mech. Sure it may be demoralizing coloring in 20 circles because an atlas just slugged you with an auto cannon hit but then when you realize that your mech is still standing and ready to fight? It is a pretty awesome feeling. The clix game failed at trying to capture this feeling. It tried very hard both as it tried to replicate the invincibility of superman and in its MechWarrior clix line and it didn’t suceed. Watching an Atlas just wade through medium mechs, or an Awesome still kicking even after both of its arms have been blown off is an impressive sight.
The lack of blanance is part of the game’s charm. Although getting a campaign set up becomes a bit of a chore. In a normal game like Gorkamorka or Bloodbowl we just agree on a team size get some figures and start fighting, keeping track of our wins and losses as we go. Knowing where and how to start in Battletech is a little bit different though. Fortunatly, the incoming total warfare book will help out with this as I will be able to ascertain what our force totals will be, what sort of mechs we have, and what sort of support we can expect.
The lack of balance leads to another interesting part of the game. Some mechs just suck. Like the Banshee which I actually want to use in a game now just to see what I can make it do. Some of the mechs are terrible. Not only are these mechs terrible but the game fluff will straight up tell you that the mechs are terrible. When you roll on the random force generation chart you will get certain results and you will know that you are being saddled with a piece of crap. Every game has these units. Little abortions in the play testing process or what have you. I don’t know how it happens. We could all make compacts to not use the crap mechs or something like that but I don’t want to and I don’t wanna play with people who would want to do that. I mean winning the game is easy. Jam as many rapid fire weapons as you can on some mechs and go for critcal hits. The more dice you roll the more chance you have of a head shot or a critical chest shot. Things like this are easy but boring. Playing with a group of disorganized miscreants is both fun and exciting and something I am HIGHLY looking forwards to.
We will have the secondary problem of getting moar minatures. I am okay with some proxying and substiutions but eventually someone else is going to have to pony up the cash for another boxed set or a butt ton of metal minatures. I’m betting it will be a boxed set though. For 50 bucks you get a lot of value, just out of the figures and map segments alone. Assuming the other person comes regularly we shouldn’t need more than 2 boxed sets. I am kinda hoping that catylist will let people buy just a bag full of the plastic figures but I think if that happens Iron Wind Metals will not be to happy. So hopefully someone will go for it and buy another one. Otherwise I am not sure how this is going to work. But I am sure as hell not making concession in my force just because we need two atlus’ and I only have one. I know where that Atlus is going. Still I don’t really see it being to much of a problem.
I am excited for all this but for now I am going to be moving on.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Hobo With a Shotgun
Alright then I am back to finish the movie post. I would of completed it then and there but Battletech with friends > this. Feel free to feel honored. Yay Battletech man that game can be fun. I’ll write some more about it later on in a different post that isn’t about movies.
So Hobo With A Shotgun. I am not attached to the internet at the moment. If I were I could tell you exactly what genra of movie Hobo is paying tribute to. It might be Grindhouse but I don’t think so. It is much closer to the Toxic Avenger and movies like that than most of the Grindhouse stuff but whatever. Genraization is not one of those things I enjoy contemplating or writing about. The movie takes some great pains to fit into the sort of 70’s gonzo cinema click. The movie is filmed in Technicolor and it shows it. One of the things the movie made me realize is that I really do like Technicolor very much. Whites seem super bright, red is intense, and the whole world has a strange organgy tinge to it. The hall mark of movies just like this one I think that if someone were to come along they could really make Technicolor sing. Maybe Sezuki will do it before he dies. I don’t really have much hope for that but whatever.
So the basic plot of the movie is that a hobo rolls into this city of moderate size on the rails and is horrified by the level of crime and violence that plauge the streets. Eventually we come to learn that the town is run by a rich psychopath and his two psychopathic sons. This guy owns the police, and therefore is pretty much allowed to do whatever it is he wants which is mostly murder and making scantily clad women dance in blood. The women were my favorite part of the movie. After awhile the hobo buys a shotgun from a pawn shop and starts cleaning up town. Lets not speculate on things like ammo capacity or how he managed to get shells. Lets just keep moving shall we?
There are rules to movies. Pregant women don’t get shot, children don’t die, things like that. It is a very hard thing to pin down but when you watch action films and even most horror films there is this strange moral code that is followed all throughout these movies. The Scream movies which we can all thank for reinvigorating the horror genera points out these rules and makes fun of them ie don’t have sex. This harkens back to the purtain morality that is oddly engrained in even the strangest parts of our culture. The Friday the 13th series follows all the rules that Scream puts out so much so that it is almost like Wes Craven sat down one day watched all ten Friday the 13th movies and decided to make a movie about the rules.
Then there are movies that ignore these rules. Going back to Wes Craven and the original version of The Hills Have Eyes one of the mutants shot a pregnant woman right at the start of the movie. This wasn’t something that had happened on film before. I think ever. It is one of the most effective moves he could make though because it firmly establishes him as a man who just doesn’t give a fuck about the rules and he will show you whatever he feels like. Even though this is the most shocking moment in the movie, the rest of the movie has this incredible sence of dread to it because you never know what the hell else you are going to have to see.
Hobo does the same thing. But unlike The Hills Have Eyes it didn’t do it to instill fear. It instead did it for the sake of shock value and shock value alone. It is a shock movie. You watch it, you go oh my god, but then there isn’t anything else to it. Unlike Gummo, or Kino Lika, or Happiness this movie excists for the sheer purpose of being shocking. It clocks in at under 90 minutes and it uses all the time possible to fill the movie with as much blood and violence as possible. From the child molesting santa, to the plague which actually has a fun way of killing people, to the baseball bat covered in razor blades, to the scene with the bumper cars, to the guy throwing a Molotov cocktail into a dumpster containing a woman and her baby, to the ice skate scene, to using a flame thrower on a bus full of children, to the thing with the man hole cover and the barbed wire noose, to the scene with the lawn mower, the movie just keeps going. I didn’t even list everything.
See I don’t care about the rules. And while I am not jaded I do like my ultra violence to mean something. Like take Machete for example. That movie had some significant ultra violence to it, but at the very least it was funny about it. It was all done with a wink and a nod, and there wasn’t a bus full of dead children involved. Had Don Johnson (The leader of the white supremacist militia group) had baked a school bus full of Mexican children the movie would have had a decisively different tone to it. Both movies are very violent but Machete stays within the rules. He even never kills the bodygaurds of the crime lord. I guess he sees them as hired help much like himself most of the time or something like that. Everyone who dies in this movie has it coming. If you were to tally up the body count in Hobo, just about no one in the movie who dies deserves it. Which makes you wonder what the point of it all was. Then again as a purely superficial piece of cinema as long as you like a dose of the ultra violence you won’t find better offerings this decade or probably the next. Me? I got distracted twords the end and played city of heroes.
So Hobo With A Shotgun. I am not attached to the internet at the moment. If I were I could tell you exactly what genra of movie Hobo is paying tribute to. It might be Grindhouse but I don’t think so. It is much closer to the Toxic Avenger and movies like that than most of the Grindhouse stuff but whatever. Genraization is not one of those things I enjoy contemplating or writing about. The movie takes some great pains to fit into the sort of 70’s gonzo cinema click. The movie is filmed in Technicolor and it shows it. One of the things the movie made me realize is that I really do like Technicolor very much. Whites seem super bright, red is intense, and the whole world has a strange organgy tinge to it. The hall mark of movies just like this one I think that if someone were to come along they could really make Technicolor sing. Maybe Sezuki will do it before he dies. I don’t really have much hope for that but whatever.
So the basic plot of the movie is that a hobo rolls into this city of moderate size on the rails and is horrified by the level of crime and violence that plauge the streets. Eventually we come to learn that the town is run by a rich psychopath and his two psychopathic sons. This guy owns the police, and therefore is pretty much allowed to do whatever it is he wants which is mostly murder and making scantily clad women dance in blood. The women were my favorite part of the movie. After awhile the hobo buys a shotgun from a pawn shop and starts cleaning up town. Lets not speculate on things like ammo capacity or how he managed to get shells. Lets just keep moving shall we?
There are rules to movies. Pregant women don’t get shot, children don’t die, things like that. It is a very hard thing to pin down but when you watch action films and even most horror films there is this strange moral code that is followed all throughout these movies. The Scream movies which we can all thank for reinvigorating the horror genera points out these rules and makes fun of them ie don’t have sex. This harkens back to the purtain morality that is oddly engrained in even the strangest parts of our culture. The Friday the 13th series follows all the rules that Scream puts out so much so that it is almost like Wes Craven sat down one day watched all ten Friday the 13th movies and decided to make a movie about the rules.
Then there are movies that ignore these rules. Going back to Wes Craven and the original version of The Hills Have Eyes one of the mutants shot a pregnant woman right at the start of the movie. This wasn’t something that had happened on film before. I think ever. It is one of the most effective moves he could make though because it firmly establishes him as a man who just doesn’t give a fuck about the rules and he will show you whatever he feels like. Even though this is the most shocking moment in the movie, the rest of the movie has this incredible sence of dread to it because you never know what the hell else you are going to have to see.
Hobo does the same thing. But unlike The Hills Have Eyes it didn’t do it to instill fear. It instead did it for the sake of shock value and shock value alone. It is a shock movie. You watch it, you go oh my god, but then there isn’t anything else to it. Unlike Gummo, or Kino Lika, or Happiness this movie excists for the sheer purpose of being shocking. It clocks in at under 90 minutes and it uses all the time possible to fill the movie with as much blood and violence as possible. From the child molesting santa, to the plague which actually has a fun way of killing people, to the baseball bat covered in razor blades, to the scene with the bumper cars, to the guy throwing a Molotov cocktail into a dumpster containing a woman and her baby, to the ice skate scene, to using a flame thrower on a bus full of children, to the thing with the man hole cover and the barbed wire noose, to the scene with the lawn mower, the movie just keeps going. I didn’t even list everything.
See I don’t care about the rules. And while I am not jaded I do like my ultra violence to mean something. Like take Machete for example. That movie had some significant ultra violence to it, but at the very least it was funny about it. It was all done with a wink and a nod, and there wasn’t a bus full of dead children involved. Had Don Johnson (The leader of the white supremacist militia group) had baked a school bus full of Mexican children the movie would have had a decisively different tone to it. Both movies are very violent but Machete stays within the rules. He even never kills the bodygaurds of the crime lord. I guess he sees them as hired help much like himself most of the time or something like that. Everyone who dies in this movie has it coming. If you were to tally up the body count in Hobo, just about no one in the movie who dies deserves it. Which makes you wonder what the point of it all was. Then again as a purely superficial piece of cinema as long as you like a dose of the ultra violence you won’t find better offerings this decade or probably the next. Me? I got distracted twords the end and played city of heroes.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Movie Time!
Okay then so here we go now. Today's post will will include the movie Kino Lika and Hobo With a Shotgun.
Once long ago I read an article by a man named Nick Hornby who was lamenting that he wanted to vary his reading materials more, that he wanted his books to encompass a galaxy of variety. Well I think I've managed to do this with this week because you can't get more diffrent than Kino Lika and Hobo With a Shotgun. I mean one is from Coatia and the other is from Canada. Enough of that though lets talk movies.
Kino Lika, which is called The Lika Cinema on IMDB is one of those movies that has the unfortunate distinction of having "that" scene. That scene is that one fucked up moment that takes people for a loop and forever after when they talk about the movie it will be in terms of that moment. Gummo has the bathtub scene. Vistor Q has its lactation. Happiness has the pedophile. Irreversable has its horrible rape scene that can actually cause physical illness. Now there is Kino Lika which has an unatractive girl trying to have sex with a pig and the pig turning her down. These moments excist in these movies for varying reasons. The reasons for their inclusion is as varied as the movies they are included in. Unfortunatly, many viewers are overwhelmed by these moments and they they end up forgetting that there is whole rest of a movie around. This is especially true in Kino Lika because the pig scene which is heart wrenchingly sad is not nearly the most important part of the movie.
The movie itself is a bit of a challange. It is about a small town of farmers who are suffering through a horrible drought. The people are poor and things look awefully bleak for everyone who is a main charecter. However, for everyone who isn't a main charecter life is actually pretty good and they are all able to relax and have fun. As a result I am not really sure what to do with the movie internally. With the exception of the kid who acidently kills his mother in a farming acident most of the people's problems are their own. The fat girl doesn't nearly have to be as unattractive as she is. I mean she really really tries to to be unatractive. The miserly farmer's problems are one of personal pride and he actually learns his lession over the course of the movie and becomes a better person. It is a rough road though for him.
So is the movie is just a bunch of misery porn? I don't think so. It isn't so much that the non main charecters are careless but rather that they've all learned to relax or something or other. I think the biggest lession of the movie is that the poor lack the means to properly deal with trauma. Or to put it better. The people in this movie have a hard time dealing with Trauma. Part of the problem is that the people are poor but they aren't destitute. This is similar to my current living condition. They live close to failure and when something upsets the careful balance of thier lives it is catastrophic. Catastrophic enough to become a main character for a movie about misery and pain.
This movie doesn't excist in a vaccum and it shares a lot themeaticlly with Gummo. Most of the main charecters in gummo lost someone important in the tornado mentioned at the onset of the movie. Grief is tough to deal with in ideal condtions. The way people live in both these movies is far less than ideal. I liked Kino Lika alot. It shows the way people live in a place I know nothing about and I found it fascinating.
Anyway I have to go do gaming times so Hobo With a Shotgun will have to wait.
Once long ago I read an article by a man named Nick Hornby who was lamenting that he wanted to vary his reading materials more, that he wanted his books to encompass a galaxy of variety. Well I think I've managed to do this with this week because you can't get more diffrent than Kino Lika and Hobo With a Shotgun. I mean one is from Coatia and the other is from Canada. Enough of that though lets talk movies.
Kino Lika, which is called The Lika Cinema on IMDB is one of those movies that has the unfortunate distinction of having "that" scene. That scene is that one fucked up moment that takes people for a loop and forever after when they talk about the movie it will be in terms of that moment. Gummo has the bathtub scene. Vistor Q has its lactation. Happiness has the pedophile. Irreversable has its horrible rape scene that can actually cause physical illness. Now there is Kino Lika which has an unatractive girl trying to have sex with a pig and the pig turning her down. These moments excist in these movies for varying reasons. The reasons for their inclusion is as varied as the movies they are included in. Unfortunatly, many viewers are overwhelmed by these moments and they they end up forgetting that there is whole rest of a movie around. This is especially true in Kino Lika because the pig scene which is heart wrenchingly sad is not nearly the most important part of the movie.
The movie itself is a bit of a challange. It is about a small town of farmers who are suffering through a horrible drought. The people are poor and things look awefully bleak for everyone who is a main charecter. However, for everyone who isn't a main charecter life is actually pretty good and they are all able to relax and have fun. As a result I am not really sure what to do with the movie internally. With the exception of the kid who acidently kills his mother in a farming acident most of the people's problems are their own. The fat girl doesn't nearly have to be as unattractive as she is. I mean she really really tries to to be unatractive. The miserly farmer's problems are one of personal pride and he actually learns his lession over the course of the movie and becomes a better person. It is a rough road though for him.
So is the movie is just a bunch of misery porn? I don't think so. It isn't so much that the non main charecters are careless but rather that they've all learned to relax or something or other. I think the biggest lession of the movie is that the poor lack the means to properly deal with trauma. Or to put it better. The people in this movie have a hard time dealing with Trauma. Part of the problem is that the people are poor but they aren't destitute. This is similar to my current living condition. They live close to failure and when something upsets the careful balance of thier lives it is catastrophic. Catastrophic enough to become a main character for a movie about misery and pain.
This movie doesn't excist in a vaccum and it shares a lot themeaticlly with Gummo. Most of the main charecters in gummo lost someone important in the tornado mentioned at the onset of the movie. Grief is tough to deal with in ideal condtions. The way people live in both these movies is far less than ideal. I liked Kino Lika alot. It shows the way people live in a place I know nothing about and I found it fascinating.
Anyway I have to go do gaming times so Hobo With a Shotgun will have to wait.
Well It has been awhile
It has been awhile since I've written in my cheery little blog. I took a break. A little longer break than I've intended but a break none the less. Now I am guessing that it is break over. I find that whenever I take an extended break from writing I always have a hard time getting started again. I hate having a hard time getting started but these things do happen. It isn't si much that I have nothing to say but rather that I have pleanty to say and I just have a bit of a hard time saying it. So at the moment I am going to write about nothing paticularly important to me and there is pleanty of that to go around. I am feeling foggy.
I suppose it is the time of year. I always start feeling foggy around my birthday and then it either lifts or becomes a crushing disapointment. This year we are leaning twords the crushing disapointment end of the spectrum. I will have to work on my birthday which I HATE doing. I will work with a retard and I am just not happy about this. I tired getting it off but it didn't work out. Ordinarly I take a whole week off for my birthday and it is great. This will still happen. It will just be at some time in the future when we have enough people and I can. This is a day that I am officially looking fowards to. Until then it will be a period of long hours doing more work than I should with people I don't paticularly like.
I don't normally complain about my job because deep down inside I actually don't mind it very much. It have way more good days than bad and it is insanely easy. That and it provides an insane amount of fringe benifits like food, toilet paper, and cleaning supplies. It also isn't like this is the first time something like this happened or that what is going to happen to me is going to be very hard. It is just that this time of year I get foggy. Like I said. So it is just the way it is. Isn't that disapointing?
I am hoping to head it off at the pass and to keep my head up and my tumbs occupied. I love occupying my thumbs and then hopefully I will pop out of the otherside of this perfectly fine and happy, ready to continue on with my cheerful little life and who know perhaps it will be improved. I meant to download Quills. Nuts. The great thing about Quills is that is just a relentlessly fun movie. The script writer really loved De Sade. Sure sure you can watch the movie never having read a word of De Sade and you'd like if you like that sort of thing. But if you are a fan of De Sade's really a fan than you can see the ecchos of his stories, his time period, and his life all throughout the movie. It perfectly blends the mytholigy surrounding the man along with tributes to his "contributions" to literature. It isn't a great movie, but my oh my it is certainly fun to watch.
Anyway I am going to start a new post and do a media round up because this one is kinda mopey and I feel sufficiently warmed up.
I suppose it is the time of year. I always start feeling foggy around my birthday and then it either lifts or becomes a crushing disapointment. This year we are leaning twords the crushing disapointment end of the spectrum. I will have to work on my birthday which I HATE doing. I will work with a retard and I am just not happy about this. I tired getting it off but it didn't work out. Ordinarly I take a whole week off for my birthday and it is great. This will still happen. It will just be at some time in the future when we have enough people and I can. This is a day that I am officially looking fowards to. Until then it will be a period of long hours doing more work than I should with people I don't paticularly like.
I don't normally complain about my job because deep down inside I actually don't mind it very much. It have way more good days than bad and it is insanely easy. That and it provides an insane amount of fringe benifits like food, toilet paper, and cleaning supplies. It also isn't like this is the first time something like this happened or that what is going to happen to me is going to be very hard. It is just that this time of year I get foggy. Like I said. So it is just the way it is. Isn't that disapointing?
I am hoping to head it off at the pass and to keep my head up and my tumbs occupied. I love occupying my thumbs and then hopefully I will pop out of the otherside of this perfectly fine and happy, ready to continue on with my cheerful little life and who know perhaps it will be improved. I meant to download Quills. Nuts. The great thing about Quills is that is just a relentlessly fun movie. The script writer really loved De Sade. Sure sure you can watch the movie never having read a word of De Sade and you'd like if you like that sort of thing. But if you are a fan of De Sade's really a fan than you can see the ecchos of his stories, his time period, and his life all throughout the movie. It perfectly blends the mytholigy surrounding the man along with tributes to his "contributions" to literature. It isn't a great movie, but my oh my it is certainly fun to watch.
Anyway I am going to start a new post and do a media round up because this one is kinda mopey and I feel sufficiently warmed up.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Innocence
So I saw Sucker Punch! And I love Sucker Punch and I will continue to love it for a very long time. I was going to write about some of the hatered that has been arrayed twords it but then I realized that I don't actually care. Haters gonna hate! Also I mean it is the internet and people just sort of spew whatever the hell it is they feel like without any regard for quality and who am I to look down upon such an endevor. This blog right here has never been checked for grammar and I only go back and fix red squigglies every so often and there are some things I've written about here that I am flat out wrong about so you know whatever.
That and I saw Innocence. Innocence is one of the first movie I've seen in a very long time that has challanged my views/perceptions of the world, and believe me I try. This is the sort of thing I go for. I could wank my credentials here but I don't feel like it.
The thing about Innocence is that it does absolutly everything to be as sinister as possible without any of it ever coming to fuitition. In a lot of ways it plays out like a gothic novel where you keep expecting death and destruction to happen at every turn, and yet it doesn't. However, unlike The Mysteries of Udolpho I actually liked this movie a lot. It starts off with a bunch of random, disjointed images that do eventually make sense later. Then there is a casket with a sun pattern on the top containing a very young girl. The girl wakes up, doesn't know where she is, where her brother is, or where her family is. The other girls dress her (oh yes she is naked, prepubescent female nudity), and explain with a strange sort of matter of factness that no one will visit her, that there are rules, and that there is punishment for breaking the rules.
From there the movie meanders on sometimes following around one charecter or another allowing the viewer to explore the mysteries of the strange boarding school but without ever really learning very much about it. We know that there is a high wall surrounding the grounds with no way in or out, that there is vent leading to somewhere, that there is a shadowy headmisteress who only comes once a year to visit the middle aged girls. She inspects them all and then takes one away and she is never seen again. Other than that the whole compound is policed by two older women, a teacher with a limp, and a ballet instructor. Rumors abound about these 4. One rumor is that the older servants are girls who tried to escape and their punishment is to stay and serve the other girls. Another rumor is that the teacher with the limp had her leg broken by the headmisteress as punishment. None of these rumors are substantiated and while punishment is often threatened we never actually see any of it take place.
And all the while the movie drips with mystery, dread, and implications none of these feelings are at all justified. Certainly, the circumstances surrounding this boarding school are very odd. However, there is no indication that there is any sort of misconduct on the part of anyone. The frequent female nudity remains ever prescent but it is never prescented in an exploitative way. Instead it is just part of life and living in an all girl communinty where swimming, running and playing outside are all frequently encouraged activities.
The first thing that seems at all out of place is when we discover that the oldest girls give ballet preformances at night in a secret stage behind a grand father clock. It is twords the end of the movie, anyone keeping track of running times knows this, and yet even still there is nothing untword going on. The girls never see anyone in the audience either before or after the show and they are fully clothed so it isn't like they are preforming some sort of horrible nudie sexual evilness, and you know what? At this point in the movie it would of been welcomed. The dread I was feeling has been in overdrive the entire movie as I had learned to like these little girls and I was never able to, not even for a second, trust the school that they belonged to. But no, it was just a dance.
At the end of the movie I felt more than a little dirty and ashamed. I just spent 90 minutes expecting that something horrible in nature to happen to these girls. Other than some of the peculiarities of the setting I had no real reason to. Maybe it is because I've seen one to many fucked up movies in my life, or maybe it is because I belong to a culture where there is a hyperactive and prevasive sense of fear, especially fear surrounding children and their abuse. Now the movie itself is french and there might be some cultural barriers in regards to how we treat children, and I definitely know there are cultural barriers twords our attitudes regarding boarding schools because they are relatively rare in our country yet I am 90% certain that the unending sense of dread was a purposeful choice on the part of the director. I feel that I was made to suspect the worst and to expect horror around every turn because I had lost what the main characters have.
Ultimately I wanna see it again. In a couple of months I need to let it sit so that when I watch it again I can see the movie for what it is instead of what my culture has trained me to view it as. It is an interesting problem though. Like I know for certain that the movie does have some dark undertones but NOTHING like what I was expecting to happen so I'll be interested to see what happens when I see it again.
THis movie kinda came out of knowwhere for me and I am really glad it happened to me. It is the first time in a long time that a movie has stuck around in my head begging me to mess with it. Normally that area is reserved for the written media so well done movie. Well done.
That and I saw Innocence. Innocence is one of the first movie I've seen in a very long time that has challanged my views/perceptions of the world, and believe me I try. This is the sort of thing I go for. I could wank my credentials here but I don't feel like it.
The thing about Innocence is that it does absolutly everything to be as sinister as possible without any of it ever coming to fuitition. In a lot of ways it plays out like a gothic novel where you keep expecting death and destruction to happen at every turn, and yet it doesn't. However, unlike The Mysteries of Udolpho I actually liked this movie a lot. It starts off with a bunch of random, disjointed images that do eventually make sense later. Then there is a casket with a sun pattern on the top containing a very young girl. The girl wakes up, doesn't know where she is, where her brother is, or where her family is. The other girls dress her (oh yes she is naked, prepubescent female nudity), and explain with a strange sort of matter of factness that no one will visit her, that there are rules, and that there is punishment for breaking the rules.
From there the movie meanders on sometimes following around one charecter or another allowing the viewer to explore the mysteries of the strange boarding school but without ever really learning very much about it. We know that there is a high wall surrounding the grounds with no way in or out, that there is vent leading to somewhere, that there is a shadowy headmisteress who only comes once a year to visit the middle aged girls. She inspects them all and then takes one away and she is never seen again. Other than that the whole compound is policed by two older women, a teacher with a limp, and a ballet instructor. Rumors abound about these 4. One rumor is that the older servants are girls who tried to escape and their punishment is to stay and serve the other girls. Another rumor is that the teacher with the limp had her leg broken by the headmisteress as punishment. None of these rumors are substantiated and while punishment is often threatened we never actually see any of it take place.
And all the while the movie drips with mystery, dread, and implications none of these feelings are at all justified. Certainly, the circumstances surrounding this boarding school are very odd. However, there is no indication that there is any sort of misconduct on the part of anyone. The frequent female nudity remains ever prescent but it is never prescented in an exploitative way. Instead it is just part of life and living in an all girl communinty where swimming, running and playing outside are all frequently encouraged activities.
The first thing that seems at all out of place is when we discover that the oldest girls give ballet preformances at night in a secret stage behind a grand father clock. It is twords the end of the movie, anyone keeping track of running times knows this, and yet even still there is nothing untword going on. The girls never see anyone in the audience either before or after the show and they are fully clothed so it isn't like they are preforming some sort of horrible nudie sexual evilness, and you know what? At this point in the movie it would of been welcomed. The dread I was feeling has been in overdrive the entire movie as I had learned to like these little girls and I was never able to, not even for a second, trust the school that they belonged to. But no, it was just a dance.
At the end of the movie I felt more than a little dirty and ashamed. I just spent 90 minutes expecting that something horrible in nature to happen to these girls. Other than some of the peculiarities of the setting I had no real reason to. Maybe it is because I've seen one to many fucked up movies in my life, or maybe it is because I belong to a culture where there is a hyperactive and prevasive sense of fear, especially fear surrounding children and their abuse. Now the movie itself is french and there might be some cultural barriers in regards to how we treat children, and I definitely know there are cultural barriers twords our attitudes regarding boarding schools because they are relatively rare in our country yet I am 90% certain that the unending sense of dread was a purposeful choice on the part of the director. I feel that I was made to suspect the worst and to expect horror around every turn because I had lost what the main characters have.
Ultimately I wanna see it again. In a couple of months I need to let it sit so that when I watch it again I can see the movie for what it is instead of what my culture has trained me to view it as. It is an interesting problem though. Like I know for certain that the movie does have some dark undertones but NOTHING like what I was expecting to happen so I'll be interested to see what happens when I see it again.
THis movie kinda came out of knowwhere for me and I am really glad it happened to me. It is the first time in a long time that a movie has stuck around in my head begging me to mess with it. Normally that area is reserved for the written media so well done movie. Well done.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Well so this is one of those things
So this will more than likely end abruptly. My original plan was to spend the entire day more or less writing. I will still do this but I will make a brief decor home to pick up my power cord. This will either go very very well or I will realize that my power chord isn't at home and then I will legitimatly freak out. I hope I don't freak out though because it is my day off and I am good for the most part, except that now I have to make a pit stop home which I dun't wanna do. After I leave TBS I guess I will switch venues to Books a Million or something I don't really know. What will more than likely happen is that I will get disracted by my house and forget everything I wanted to do.
So lets get this started shall we? I was going to write about the Instructions but a couple of articles I've read recently has given me food for thought.
It is about China. I think the young man in "Life During War Time" put it best when he said, "In a few years China will take over and none of this will matter". If you saw that in context you would be both crying and laughing. This seems like a good thing but it actually really hurts.
The fear of China comes from a lot of things and I think it is incredibly important to maintain a sense of perspective about the whole thing. So lets get some perspective going yes?
First and foremost China presents a unique problem for us as Americans because for the first time in our history we have to "deal" with a country that is fundamentally alien to our way of thought. By "deal" I mean that we are damn close to an equal footing. Their country is huge and fighting a land war in their boarders would suck. They are ecconimcally powerful enough so that if the entire western world decides to levy economic sanctions against a country, china can pick up the slack. I am not just saying that either this is about what is going to happen in Iran. The Teleran government has been a source of irritation for us for a very long time. Despite the fact that they are sitting on some of the world's largest untapped oil fields and lots of natural gas they aren't doing to well finacially. Paritially this is their fault. More importantly this is partially the west's fault due to heavy economic sanctions, refusal to share technology, and tarrifs preventing independent buisnesses from starting up there. As a result they can't liquify their natural gas, or even refine the oil they have. This means that they need to import most of their gas. Currently pretty much 1/3 of all of Iran's imports, including gas is China. This allows Iran to run around doing all the things that piss the west off.
Now before we get doom and gloom Iran has problems dealing with things so they regularly do things with irritate china causing them to have a strained relationship. However, it raises a compelling puzzle. Our sanctions are now only kinda working, and we are offering china nearly free, unrestricted acess to one of the world's largest oil fields. We don't really want them to have that, both for the oil, and because they are supporting Iran. However, if Iran makes all its changes then we remove sanctions and China looses its monopoly. If we get China on board with the sanctgions China looses its monopoly. We could get China on board, then make Iran reform, then allow china the same level of access but they really leaves us where we are right now. We would like to stabalize Iran for the same reason why we want to stablalize the whole rediculous region and so far the only real winner here is china and even they aren't doing so well because Iran can be really annoying to deal with. Just recently they declared hundreds of products beneith the dignity of the Iranian consumer. Guess how many of them were manufactured in China?
I don't have an answer to this whole situation. I am just pointing out that China has the ability to challenge our authority. It is also important to realize that they aren't doing this just to piss us off. Think of it like a game. You are second best, up and coming, and one of the world's most valuable resources is up for grab and the most powerful country in decline, is refusing to deal with them. So why on earth wouldn't they deal with them? In case you are curious it is because the region is volitile and they tend to lash out. But more on that at another time.
Another problem is the upcoming WAR with china. To be honest neither one of us wants this. China doesn't paticularly have a great deal of imperialist desires. You need to remeber that they built the great wall twice, once was an actual wall, and the other time to keep the internet out. China doesn't want to take over america or several other things. The thing that China desires most is secutiry, specifically security for China. They are willing to let the rest of the world burn. They do not want to become the world's watch dog, they don't want to become the world's next bank, they don't care about other repressive regimes, they don't even seem to be that concered about North Korea being all pissy about everything. They want to get lots of matierals and play real life MineCraft. So we can relax for a bit. The biggest problem we have is that some day down the line we will more than likely conflict over resources. Again that is quite a bit down the road. So for the most part I was relaxed.
Then someone wrote an article about how we have a lot of security interests in that area of the world, specifically Japan, South Korea, and Tiawan. Man I don't know how to spell that last one. While china isn't really imperialistic in terms of meddling with the rest of the world they do like their little chunk of the world. As a result we might end up drawn into something if they move in on one of the Koreas or something like that. Oddly enough North Korea is serving as a nice buffer state because no one fucking wants it. Again it is a problem. How would we respond if China starts threatening one of our allies? That is going to cause us to make some hard choices, after all the last time we fought a war for Japan we ended up in Vietnam and that sucked.
I have a little bit more on this subject but the battery is gonna die so I'll get back to it someday. I want to do a little bit more reading on a couple of things and re read some other things, then collate some more information, which is what I was doing here, and this I should be able to get something larger together. For now I just have a lot of dissasociated ideas.
All these issues when combined become even more troubling when we factor in the idea that we as a country no idea how to deal with them on a cultural level. They don't see anything like we do and that is the thing we need to get over first and foremost.
So lets get this started shall we? I was going to write about the Instructions but a couple of articles I've read recently has given me food for thought.
It is about China. I think the young man in "Life During War Time" put it best when he said, "In a few years China will take over and none of this will matter". If you saw that in context you would be both crying and laughing. This seems like a good thing but it actually really hurts.
The fear of China comes from a lot of things and I think it is incredibly important to maintain a sense of perspective about the whole thing. So lets get some perspective going yes?
First and foremost China presents a unique problem for us as Americans because for the first time in our history we have to "deal" with a country that is fundamentally alien to our way of thought. By "deal" I mean that we are damn close to an equal footing. Their country is huge and fighting a land war in their boarders would suck. They are ecconimcally powerful enough so that if the entire western world decides to levy economic sanctions against a country, china can pick up the slack. I am not just saying that either this is about what is going to happen in Iran. The Teleran government has been a source of irritation for us for a very long time. Despite the fact that they are sitting on some of the world's largest untapped oil fields and lots of natural gas they aren't doing to well finacially. Paritially this is their fault. More importantly this is partially the west's fault due to heavy economic sanctions, refusal to share technology, and tarrifs preventing independent buisnesses from starting up there. As a result they can't liquify their natural gas, or even refine the oil they have. This means that they need to import most of their gas. Currently pretty much 1/3 of all of Iran's imports, including gas is China. This allows Iran to run around doing all the things that piss the west off.
Now before we get doom and gloom Iran has problems dealing with things so they regularly do things with irritate china causing them to have a strained relationship. However, it raises a compelling puzzle. Our sanctions are now only kinda working, and we are offering china nearly free, unrestricted acess to one of the world's largest oil fields. We don't really want them to have that, both for the oil, and because they are supporting Iran. However, if Iran makes all its changes then we remove sanctions and China looses its monopoly. If we get China on board with the sanctgions China looses its monopoly. We could get China on board, then make Iran reform, then allow china the same level of access but they really leaves us where we are right now. We would like to stabalize Iran for the same reason why we want to stablalize the whole rediculous region and so far the only real winner here is china and even they aren't doing so well because Iran can be really annoying to deal with. Just recently they declared hundreds of products beneith the dignity of the Iranian consumer. Guess how many of them were manufactured in China?
I don't have an answer to this whole situation. I am just pointing out that China has the ability to challenge our authority. It is also important to realize that they aren't doing this just to piss us off. Think of it like a game. You are second best, up and coming, and one of the world's most valuable resources is up for grab and the most powerful country in decline, is refusing to deal with them. So why on earth wouldn't they deal with them? In case you are curious it is because the region is volitile and they tend to lash out. But more on that at another time.
Another problem is the upcoming WAR with china. To be honest neither one of us wants this. China doesn't paticularly have a great deal of imperialist desires. You need to remeber that they built the great wall twice, once was an actual wall, and the other time to keep the internet out. China doesn't want to take over america or several other things. The thing that China desires most is secutiry, specifically security for China. They are willing to let the rest of the world burn. They do not want to become the world's watch dog, they don't want to become the world's next bank, they don't care about other repressive regimes, they don't even seem to be that concered about North Korea being all pissy about everything. They want to get lots of matierals and play real life MineCraft. So we can relax for a bit. The biggest problem we have is that some day down the line we will more than likely conflict over resources. Again that is quite a bit down the road. So for the most part I was relaxed.
Then someone wrote an article about how we have a lot of security interests in that area of the world, specifically Japan, South Korea, and Tiawan. Man I don't know how to spell that last one. While china isn't really imperialistic in terms of meddling with the rest of the world they do like their little chunk of the world. As a result we might end up drawn into something if they move in on one of the Koreas or something like that. Oddly enough North Korea is serving as a nice buffer state because no one fucking wants it. Again it is a problem. How would we respond if China starts threatening one of our allies? That is going to cause us to make some hard choices, after all the last time we fought a war for Japan we ended up in Vietnam and that sucked.
I have a little bit more on this subject but the battery is gonna die so I'll get back to it someday. I want to do a little bit more reading on a couple of things and re read some other things, then collate some more information, which is what I was doing here, and this I should be able to get something larger together. For now I just have a lot of dissasociated ideas.
All these issues when combined become even more troubling when we factor in the idea that we as a country no idea how to deal with them on a cultural level. They don't see anything like we do and that is the thing we need to get over first and foremost.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Month In Review
Well... alright then that could of gone better. Things got off to a pretty demoralizing start with a work schedule from hell and then my baby laptops battery charger died.
All in all things didn't quite get off to the start I had planned. One thing I realized is that I was very focused on writing projects when I conceived of the whole list thing in particular with NA25. So when the lap top was no longer functional the whole thing kinda fell apart for me. I realize now that this was a mistake and that I need to be more flexible with what it is I plan to do. One laptop death should not derail this entire project and hopefully it won't happen again.
The other thing I need to do, and this one will be hard, is to clean and organize my house. I've come to realize that while I like a messy environment, and I feel comfortable in a messy environment it isn't at all conducive to getting things done and I want to get things done. Ergo some changes are going to have to be made and that is a biggie. However, if I get the list thing down and regimented then I'll be better at keeping up with it than when I was living free form. Once I do that I need to get myself a card table from somewhere and I should be good to go. It is something I need to do anyway. Once I clean up I know for a fact that my house will get cluttered again but I think I need to keep it far closer to a more managble level than it is right now. The reason for the card table is so that I can have a nice workspace for me to get things done on because craming everything onto two tv trays is kind of rediculous and I plan on starting clearing out room as soon as I finish this post. I won't get very far tonight because it is already midnight but I'll get somewhere and that is what's important.
This way I will be able to just pick up my baby lap top and physically move it into my work area and not have to worry about fucking around with things or getting overly distracted. I still definetly plan on doing lots of work and books a million and such but being compleatly unable to work at home is a sign that something is wrong so off we go with that.
Yeah just typing this on the desk top has not gone very well at all. God I get randomly distracted easily.
On the upside I did get several things done and what little of my weekly lists I did do have served their purpose.
I did get most of my Malifaux figures painted and I am pretty proud of some of those paint jobs if I do say so myself. I want to paint the rest up soon but I need to hit up tbs and pick up some green stuff to fill in the gaps. I just haven't really been over there at all this month, mostly because my baby lap top is dead and partly because some of the people in there make me want to kill myself. There is this one guy in paticular who I really want to shut down. However, arguing with him is like arguing with the internet it is tedious and pointless. Besides I really do have better things to do than bother with him.
I also tend to think more and more about little experimental fiction projects I want to sling around, disjointed scenes and lots of NA25 stuff and all of this is good! This is the main thing I wanted the project to do. So hopefully it will work out. This week's goal is to get massive amounts of things cleaned up and better sorted out. Once I do that I'll grab a card table and be on my way to a more productive, happier self.
I am not to disapointed in last month's failures. I've identified some problems, made some progress, and I had a good time. Now this month all there is to do, is to do better. Starting NOW!
All in all things didn't quite get off to the start I had planned. One thing I realized is that I was very focused on writing projects when I conceived of the whole list thing in particular with NA25. So when the lap top was no longer functional the whole thing kinda fell apart for me. I realize now that this was a mistake and that I need to be more flexible with what it is I plan to do. One laptop death should not derail this entire project and hopefully it won't happen again.
The other thing I need to do, and this one will be hard, is to clean and organize my house. I've come to realize that while I like a messy environment, and I feel comfortable in a messy environment it isn't at all conducive to getting things done and I want to get things done. Ergo some changes are going to have to be made and that is a biggie. However, if I get the list thing down and regimented then I'll be better at keeping up with it than when I was living free form. Once I do that I need to get myself a card table from somewhere and I should be good to go. It is something I need to do anyway. Once I clean up I know for a fact that my house will get cluttered again but I think I need to keep it far closer to a more managble level than it is right now. The reason for the card table is so that I can have a nice workspace for me to get things done on because craming everything onto two tv trays is kind of rediculous and I plan on starting clearing out room as soon as I finish this post. I won't get very far tonight because it is already midnight but I'll get somewhere and that is what's important.
This way I will be able to just pick up my baby lap top and physically move it into my work area and not have to worry about fucking around with things or getting overly distracted. I still definetly plan on doing lots of work and books a million and such but being compleatly unable to work at home is a sign that something is wrong so off we go with that.
Yeah just typing this on the desk top has not gone very well at all. God I get randomly distracted easily.
On the upside I did get several things done and what little of my weekly lists I did do have served their purpose.
I did get most of my Malifaux figures painted and I am pretty proud of some of those paint jobs if I do say so myself. I want to paint the rest up soon but I need to hit up tbs and pick up some green stuff to fill in the gaps. I just haven't really been over there at all this month, mostly because my baby lap top is dead and partly because some of the people in there make me want to kill myself. There is this one guy in paticular who I really want to shut down. However, arguing with him is like arguing with the internet it is tedious and pointless. Besides I really do have better things to do than bother with him.
I also tend to think more and more about little experimental fiction projects I want to sling around, disjointed scenes and lots of NA25 stuff and all of this is good! This is the main thing I wanted the project to do. So hopefully it will work out. This week's goal is to get massive amounts of things cleaned up and better sorted out. Once I do that I'll grab a card table and be on my way to a more productive, happier self.
I am not to disapointed in last month's failures. I've identified some problems, made some progress, and I had a good time. Now this month all there is to do, is to do better. Starting NOW!
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