I kinda like all my games to be small, quick and low level. This has not really been the case over the last few weekends. First off, I wanted to try and finish my long running World of Darkness game, November's Children. My core players are Andy, Marsh, Ade and Tim, with Andy and Marsh having been in every session. So it was that on Bank Holiday Monday, the five of us, along with my brother, went up to Tim's house to have a barbecue and finish the last three sessions of November's Children in one go.
We succeeded. Partially. We only got two sessions done, since Ade couldn't make it. We ate most of the barbecue, but about a third of the beefburgers I got were left in the fridge for me to have with my pasta in the coming weeks. So another final session will have to be arranged. We gamed for the best part of eight hours, including full scale pitched battles between psychic cultists and angry werewolves, it was pretty damn brutal. In the end, we were only one safehouse siege away from the end of the storyline.
And the weekend after that?
Ian, Robin, Ed, Dave and Weave needed a sixth player in their gargantuan Warhammer battle of Skaven vs. Dwarfs. Now, it's been a long time since I actually played Warhammer and never with this edition of the rules. I've never played with either of those armies. I was on the Skaven team and had to quickly learn as much as I could about my sacrificial force in the middle, that was quickly decimated by massed Dwarf firepower.
The first two turns took an entire day, while the rest of the game was wrapped up on the sunday. It was a close one, with only the narrowest of narrow victories going to the stunty bearded ones. I'm not sure if I enjoyed myself, since I was stuck with an army I didn't really like, playing against an army I didn't really like. I've always thought that Skaven and Dwarfs are well suited to each other.
Both are pretty chin-hairy.
On the other side of the table, Robin was playing with a small contingent of Bretonnians and quite frankly, I would have much rather been over there, since Dave was a grump for most of the game. He's a poor winner and a poor loser, but he's a decent guy all round. I'm not sure how much I miss Warhammer, but I do kinda miss Ian, Robin, Ed and the feeling of hanging out in Miniature Merchants from many, many years ago. Ah... the Big Games.
Okay so...
CAPTAIN AMERICA:
FIRST AVENGER
One the absolutely great things about this Marvel 'Road to the Avengers' is that all the films have this exact same quality to them while being very different in nature. They all have a wonderful feeling of 'we're not brilliant or ground-breaking, but we are a whole load of geeky awesome'.
What with all the tie-ins with Thor and Iron Man, this movie is firmly entrenched in the Marvelverse, and it doesn't do anything to hold it back. This film is entertaining, plenty violent and plays out like a real WW2 epic. The length of time this film covers could easily feel like a lot longer than it is.
Because this is such a straight laced film, without any hint of sarcasm in its telling, it's kinda difficult to understand where the character development comes in, but as soon as you realise that Captain America is kind of like an opposite hero, it all makes sense. Normally a superhero gets their powers and then has to figure out how to actually be a hero with them. With Cap, he's alreay a hero, he just needs to figure out how to be super.
I wasn't entirely sure about Hugo Weaving's Red Skull, but I think that was just something to do with the facial make up. All in all, the supporting cast were incredible, with the Tommy Lee Jones interrogating Toby Jones scene to be an absolute show stealer. So many Joneses... but anyway, Dominic Cooper's Howard Stark was refreshingly familiar, while Natalie Dormer's short role was unexpectedly welcome, considering just how hot she is.
All in all, I genuinely can't wait to see The Avengers, now that all the major players are in place. One of the best things Marvel ever did was to make sure that the leads for these films were not A-list Leading Men, and Chris Evans nails it.
He's our Captain.
And so next... Somthing I saw on my Holiday...
Wednesday, 31 August 2011
Tuesday, 30 August 2011
Relationships
They have always, always, always confused me. I don't really get them. I don't know why people do them a lot of the time, I don't always see any real benefit. But now I find that due to a single text messege, I have plummetted head first into one.
So a while back, I made the acquaintence of a girl called Moina, who is a huge nerd, an exceptionally talented singer and one of those people who will talk for absolute hours and hours without stopping for that handy breathing thing.
She's brilliant, really.
I don't want to sound like I'm gushing or anything, because I still don't quite know why all this has happenned or what happens next, all I know is that this all kinda new and a bit terrifying, but I think I see now what the upside is.
And I don't just mean the physical part, although that's terrifyingly worth it. I think it's just being able to express those things you keep in the back of your mind and don't normally share. It helps sometimes, I think.
Of course, everyone else already knows this. I haven't been in a relationship since I was 20, and I'm now 27. So all this is kinda like a refresher course in humans, I guess, what the other gender are actually like. Sort of. A bit.
We'll see how it goes, eh?
THE PRINCESS OF MONTPENSIER.
Well, this was a Swashbuckler if ever I saw one. Set in the late 1500's, during the many, many wars between the Catholic Church and the Huguenots, this film is the adaptation of a novella written in the 1600's about a young woman who is forced to marry a well-to-do young noble, while being hopelessly in love with another. Our main character however, is the veteran turned deserter who is recruited to be our Princess' instructor in all things nobility.
It's a classic story, a little heavy handed, but I especially enjoyed watching the central princes fighting over the hand of a girl who was not especially worth it and the depictions of the wars around them. The central character, Marie, did have a splendid development, we see her go from spoiled noble girl to being forced to gain an understanding of the world she's inherited and how she outgrew both of her squabbling princes.
The only real bitch of it was that I had to miss the last five minutes and I can't seem to find a plot synopsis or review online that'll tell me what happenned, so I guess I'll just have to buy the sodding thing on DVD at some point.
Next up: CAPTAIN
Wait for it
AMERICA, THE FIRST AVENGER!!
So a while back, I made the acquaintence of a girl called Moina, who is a huge nerd, an exceptionally talented singer and one of those people who will talk for absolute hours and hours without stopping for that handy breathing thing.
She's brilliant, really.
I don't want to sound like I'm gushing or anything, because I still don't quite know why all this has happenned or what happens next, all I know is that this all kinda new and a bit terrifying, but I think I see now what the upside is.
And I don't just mean the physical part, although that's terrifyingly worth it. I think it's just being able to express those things you keep in the back of your mind and don't normally share. It helps sometimes, I think.
Of course, everyone else already knows this. I haven't been in a relationship since I was 20, and I'm now 27. So all this is kinda like a refresher course in humans, I guess, what the other gender are actually like. Sort of. A bit.
We'll see how it goes, eh?
THE PRINCESS OF MONTPENSIER.
Well, this was a Swashbuckler if ever I saw one. Set in the late 1500's, during the many, many wars between the Catholic Church and the Huguenots, this film is the adaptation of a novella written in the 1600's about a young woman who is forced to marry a well-to-do young noble, while being hopelessly in love with another. Our main character however, is the veteran turned deserter who is recruited to be our Princess' instructor in all things nobility.
It's a classic story, a little heavy handed, but I especially enjoyed watching the central princes fighting over the hand of a girl who was not especially worth it and the depictions of the wars around them. The central character, Marie, did have a splendid development, we see her go from spoiled noble girl to being forced to gain an understanding of the world she's inherited and how she outgrew both of her squabbling princes.
The only real bitch of it was that I had to miss the last five minutes and I can't seem to find a plot synopsis or review online that'll tell me what happenned, so I guess I'll just have to buy the sodding thing on DVD at some point.
Next up: CAPTAIN
Wait for it
AMERICA, THE FIRST AVENGER!!
Wednesday, 17 August 2011
Single-Track Mind
So, it appears that not even I'm interested in my other blog, seeing as how I'm pretty rubbish at actually thinking of things to say for it. I may... *may*... come back to it at some point, but for now I think I'll leave it and concentrate on actually posting on this one. For some reason I only ever seem to update this thing in clumps of four posts.
I've always had something of a multi-track mind, I normally like to have more than one thing going on at any given time, but recently I've been finding that difficuly. Maybe I'm just getting old (he says, being 27), maybe I'm just getting tired of it all. Eh, how many people even read this blog anyway? Does it really matter to anyone but me? Or even me?
So if see another TV series that I really want to talk about, I'll do it in this blog. Sound fair?
POTICHE.
Now, apart from actually being a decent Orange Advert, I didn't know much about this film. It features the incredible nose of Gerard Depardieu, the firm, mature backside of Catherine Deneuve and the gentle, funny, reassuring feel that I have come to expect from French Romantic Comedies.
Genuinely, I'll only watch Rom-Coms if they're French these days, there's just something that the cheese-eating surrender monkeys know about this genre better than the rest of us. I've certainly never seen an American or British one as accomplished as Amilie or Priceless or even this, Potiche.
It's based around women's rights and their role in the workplace, it's got some wickedly funny innuendo and it's upbeat and lighthearted. What more can I say about it?
Next is: The Princess of Montpensier.
I've always had something of a multi-track mind, I normally like to have more than one thing going on at any given time, but recently I've been finding that difficuly. Maybe I'm just getting old (he says, being 27), maybe I'm just getting tired of it all. Eh, how many people even read this blog anyway? Does it really matter to anyone but me? Or even me?
So if see another TV series that I really want to talk about, I'll do it in this blog. Sound fair?
POTICHE.
Now, apart from actually being a decent Orange Advert, I didn't know much about this film. It features the incredible nose of Gerard Depardieu, the firm, mature backside of Catherine Deneuve and the gentle, funny, reassuring feel that I have come to expect from French Romantic Comedies.
Genuinely, I'll only watch Rom-Coms if they're French these days, there's just something that the cheese-eating surrender monkeys know about this genre better than the rest of us. I've certainly never seen an American or British one as accomplished as Amilie or Priceless or even this, Potiche.
It's based around women's rights and their role in the workplace, it's got some wickedly funny innuendo and it's upbeat and lighthearted. What more can I say about it?
Next is: The Princess of Montpensier.
Thursday, 4 August 2011
Sunny Swissland
So I find myself in the middle of Europe, with my parents, my brother, his girlfriend and the family dog, all waiting for the opportunity to meet up with twenty more members of my family in the days to come. Oh yes, it's that time again, it's Swissland time. You see, every couple of years, someone on my Mum's side of the family (that is to say, the Hobkirk clan), gets the idea that we just don't see enough of each other, so we organise a get-together at my Uncle Alan's house, which is in Gilly. Next to Geneva.
So holiday time for us, then. We've taken my brother's girlfriend with us, which is intersting, having five humans and one beagle crammed into one tiny chalet for five days in Lauterbrunen before we actually go to Gilly. We made it work, but only due to being outside for a fair amount of the time and having a regularly scheduled family film night (Mammia Mia, The King's Speech, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, then Shakespeare Retold's Much Ado, if you were interested) and walking the dog.
That dog got walked a lot.
I think the one thing that will sadly stick with me from this holiday is that I find it difficult to spend too much time with my dad, especially in close quarters. We're very different people these days, but then some would say that we're very similiar just with alternate view-points and both have the same kind of stubborn-ness when those view-points conflict. Which is a lot. I found that there were times that I didn't fully enjoy this holiday because I was being forced to spend too much time sitting next to him, which is of course quite sad in it's own way.
However, I am reminded that Swissland is a beautiful country with very nice multilingual people who rely utterly on you as a tourist. The Eiger and the Junfrau are some of the most visually stunning places I've ever been, as my uncle Bill put it, even the lav has a stunning view. We walked up and down and across mountain tops, we clambered through breath-taking waterfalls and we explored through at least one famous cheese-making chateaux. I do like these every-few-years jaunts, if just to see some of the rest of the family and how they are getting on.
My cousins Robin and Kenneth are both completely different from how they were as little brats (I mean kids, yes... kids), Aunty Marion was born to be a Grandmother, I know that for certain now, our collection of family Dogs continues to grow, as does the new third generation (Ryan is 10, Reese is 4, Rory is 3 and Alex is 2) and I'm reminded that I'm just a little bit behind all of my various cousins in terms of career and family.
But at this point, it doesn't matter, I'm here, I'm not changed much and I'm just glad to see most of them. I was even getting on with Carolyn towards the end of it, she's fun to wind up. I do wish that I could see more of my extended family, but there's a fair few that live in Scotland and just one or two that live in Swissland, so I'll have to make do with the ones I do have access too, even if I don't get to see them very often.
GREEN LANTERN.
So this review has been a long time in the genesis. I've been ranting, raving, brooding, bitching and generally sulking about the Green Lantern movie ever since I heard that they'd chosen to go with Ryan Reynolds in the lead role of Hal Jordan rather than an actor. Any actor. Fuck it, they could have just used cut-out images from the comics that didn't move and they'd still be preferable to that insufferably pretty douche.
And so it's here, on the big screen, taking up my money. And it sucks. It really, really does suck. I'm pretty sure that you saw that one coming, but I just can't stress enough how unimpressed with this movie I am. I mean seriously, the amount of money spent on this thing and you'd think they'd put some frickin' effort into it. It really seems like this movie was made with all the attention of watching other super hero movies and copy-pasting the tropes.
There's absolutely nothing in this movie that makes it stand out as original in any way. There's nothing in this movie worth watching. The terrible CGI (where Reynolds actually gains a few pounds from shot to shot where he takes the suit off suddenly) to the utterly pointless version of Parrallax that simply doesn't do any justice to the comics. The only decent recommendation was having the Guardians create the Yellow Ring in the first place, as a weapon of last resort. That worked for me, as did Mark Strong's performance as Sinestro, but all in all, I just can't stress it enough.
This film sucked. SUCKED.
I want my idolation back.
Next time: Potiche
So holiday time for us, then. We've taken my brother's girlfriend with us, which is intersting, having five humans and one beagle crammed into one tiny chalet for five days in Lauterbrunen before we actually go to Gilly. We made it work, but only due to being outside for a fair amount of the time and having a regularly scheduled family film night (Mammia Mia, The King's Speech, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, then Shakespeare Retold's Much Ado, if you were interested) and walking the dog.
That dog got walked a lot.
I think the one thing that will sadly stick with me from this holiday is that I find it difficult to spend too much time with my dad, especially in close quarters. We're very different people these days, but then some would say that we're very similiar just with alternate view-points and both have the same kind of stubborn-ness when those view-points conflict. Which is a lot. I found that there were times that I didn't fully enjoy this holiday because I was being forced to spend too much time sitting next to him, which is of course quite sad in it's own way.
However, I am reminded that Swissland is a beautiful country with very nice multilingual people who rely utterly on you as a tourist. The Eiger and the Junfrau are some of the most visually stunning places I've ever been, as my uncle Bill put it, even the lav has a stunning view. We walked up and down and across mountain tops, we clambered through breath-taking waterfalls and we explored through at least one famous cheese-making chateaux. I do like these every-few-years jaunts, if just to see some of the rest of the family and how they are getting on.
My cousins Robin and Kenneth are both completely different from how they were as little brats (I mean kids, yes... kids), Aunty Marion was born to be a Grandmother, I know that for certain now, our collection of family Dogs continues to grow, as does the new third generation (Ryan is 10, Reese is 4, Rory is 3 and Alex is 2) and I'm reminded that I'm just a little bit behind all of my various cousins in terms of career and family.
But at this point, it doesn't matter, I'm here, I'm not changed much and I'm just glad to see most of them. I was even getting on with Carolyn towards the end of it, she's fun to wind up. I do wish that I could see more of my extended family, but there's a fair few that live in Scotland and just one or two that live in Swissland, so I'll have to make do with the ones I do have access too, even if I don't get to see them very often.
GREEN LANTERN.
So this review has been a long time in the genesis. I've been ranting, raving, brooding, bitching and generally sulking about the Green Lantern movie ever since I heard that they'd chosen to go with Ryan Reynolds in the lead role of Hal Jordan rather than an actor. Any actor. Fuck it, they could have just used cut-out images from the comics that didn't move and they'd still be preferable to that insufferably pretty douche.
And so it's here, on the big screen, taking up my money. And it sucks. It really, really does suck. I'm pretty sure that you saw that one coming, but I just can't stress enough how unimpressed with this movie I am. I mean seriously, the amount of money spent on this thing and you'd think they'd put some frickin' effort into it. It really seems like this movie was made with all the attention of watching other super hero movies and copy-pasting the tropes.
There's absolutely nothing in this movie that makes it stand out as original in any way. There's nothing in this movie worth watching. The terrible CGI (where Reynolds actually gains a few pounds from shot to shot where he takes the suit off suddenly) to the utterly pointless version of Parrallax that simply doesn't do any justice to the comics. The only decent recommendation was having the Guardians create the Yellow Ring in the first place, as a weapon of last resort. That worked for me, as did Mark Strong's performance as Sinestro, but all in all, I just can't stress it enough.
This film sucked. SUCKED.
I want my idolation back.
Next time: Potiche
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