Another uneventful week.
Still playing Slay the Spire here and there. I’ve only beaten ascension level 13 over the whole week, and I don’t know how long it’ll take to beat the next one.
I’m starting to think that I should invest in a new game. The only game I bought this whole year was Balatro.
What’s everyone else doing?
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers was released for Halloween of 1988. The movie’s selling point is in the name. 1982’s Halloween 3: Season of the Witch did not continue the story from the first two films. Neither does it have anything to do with the rest of the Halloween franchise beyond the production and some thematic elements. I have already talked about John Carpenter’s desire to make the Halloween films a yearly anthology series, with each movie sharing only the Halloween holiday as connecting tissue. Carpenter had not wanted to continue the story from the first movie; in fact he made “The Shape” more human and less of a conceptual avatar in Halloween II just so he could kill that character off. At least, that’s my reading of what has been related. John Carpenter and his partner, Debra Hill only agreed to return for Halloween III on the condition that the story had nothing to do with the first two movies, a stipulation executive producers Moustapha Akkad and Irwin Yablans accepted. Even then, Carpenter and Hill only worked as producers; arranging talent and resources.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Horror Slasher Evolution: Halloween Returns”
I don’t go to the movie theater anymore. I never was a fan of spending a decent chunk of money on a single watch of a movie, then spending a small fortune on snacks and a Coke. Add on top of that the several experiences of annoying audiences ruining the atmosphere of great movies and I was ready for an excuse to stop going to the theaters. Then came the pandemic and the bottom fell out of the movie screening industry and earlier streaming debuts of movies. Now, most of the time you couldn’t pay me to go. However there are movie debuts that tempt me to go back. The release of “The Long Walk” was one such movie.
I’ve always loved Stephen King adaptations. From the masterpiece that is “The Shining” to the batshit insanity that is “The Langoliers” I find something to enjoy in most of them. There’s a warmth and particular charm to his characters that is hard to describe but you definitely know it when you see it. Maybe the copious amounts of cocaine imbibed while writing his characters just forces its way through even when it’s been filtered through another layer of interpretation. Regardless, I can’t read so enjoying his stories in book form is impossible for me. So when I saw a video discussing the “The Long Walk” prior to its release, I got very excited.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “An Idiot’s Analysis of A Film: The Long Walk”
This week I had a tooth extraction, so not much to talk about. My jaw hurts.
How’s everyone else this week?
We have talked about how two of the three major franchise slasher villains started out: Michael Myers was real in a manner-of-speaking, but was more of an idea; while Pamela Voorhees and later her son Jason were very straight-forward human serial killers. Freddy Krueger, from A Nightmare on Elm Street, deserves some deeper analysis. Until you get to the final scene of the first movie, Fred Krueger is a now-dead child murderer (the script, even to the point of shooting as far as I can tell, explicitly called him a child r***ist but real-life events during production prompted the change). His appearance in the dreams of the children (keep in mind all of the major characters in the film ARE WRITTEN as mid-teenage…15 and 16 years old) is *implied* to be a form of psychic emanation caused by the collective trauma of THEIR PARENTS. The people who burned Fred Krueger alive when his murder case was thrown out before conviction on a technicality. This is born out, more-or-less, when Nancy confronts Krueger, telling him he doesn’t scare her anymore (shades of “You have no power over me!”) She turns her back on Freddy and he poofs into nothingness as he lunges toward her.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Horror Slasher Evolution: What Is Freddy Krueger?”
What is this silly word, why did some people get so irritated by it, and why did it fall out of use?
Here is how I'd conquer the game-publishing business. (Hint: NOT by copying EA, 2K, Activision, Take-Two, or Ubisoft.)
How does image compression work, and why does it create those ugly spots all over some videos and not others?
This is a horrible narrative that undermines the hobby through crass stereotypes. The hobby is vast, gamers come from all walks of life, and you shouldn't judge ANY group by its worst members.
The true story of three strange days in 1989, when the last months of my adolescence ran out and the first few sparks of adulthood appeared.
A programming project where I set out to make a Minecraft-style world so I can experiment with Octree data.
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2013.
A wild game filled with wild ideas that features fun puzzles and mind-blowing environments. It has a great atmosphere, and one REALLY annoying flaw with its gameplay.
Just how big IS No Man's Sky? What if you made a map of all of its landmass? How big would it be?
A big chunk of the internet went down in October of 2016. What happened? Was it a hack?
T w e n t y S i d e d
