rusty_halo (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rusty_halo) wrote2005-08-23 04:05 pm
rusty_halo) wrote2005-08-23 04:05 pm
Entry tags:
Music, Video Games, & Movies, oh my!
Raymond Watts... fictional character? (This links to a pic of someone at an anime convention dressed up as him.)
*is highly amused*
Also, Bryan Black says:
raymonds been toying around with some new sounds and structures for a couple months to my knowledge
i think he's gonna come back with something great.. maybe i will find out more next week when im in London
*crosses fingers*
Seriously, I've been listening to almost nothing but Raymond's work for the past year (minus a month or so of rediscovering NIN). He is so incredibly talented/creative/brilliant. And he has such an exceptional and large and varied body of work to explore. Plus his music is so deep and layered, which makes it endlessly re-listenable.
I've managed to obtain nearly everything he's released (minus a couple really rare things that I'm still searching for and some expensive things that he only did minor work on) plus a good amount of bootleg material. My friend Mike was over recently and said that I have the best Pig collection he's ever seen, which was way cool since a year ago I was contacting Mike asking which Pig album I should start with. :)
I'm listening to the "No One Gets Out of Her Alive" EP, which is my most recent acquisition. A bunch of the songs are the same as on the U.S. version of "Wrecked" (I still need to get the Japanese version) but it's got some cool new ones including "Jump the Gun" (this has a really fast vocal part that I haven't heard used elsewhere, and a really interesting layering of vocal elements) and "Satanic Panic" (which is mostly made up of cleverly distorted samples of speeches of American Christian religious nuts--it doesn't even have any of Raymond's own words and yet the way he puts together the music and distorts the sound so totally captures his disgust and anger and criticism and dark humor regarding religious extremism).
Anyway... ooh, I beat the first three Monkey Island games! I loved the first two, but the third was kind of lame and stupid. It was like since the technology improved, they had to take every opportunity to show off their fancy animation... which was nice and all, but it slowed down the game and was incredibly tedious for the actual player. Not a good design philosophy. Plus it got too self-referential and fake--the first game tried to immerse you in a pirate world at least on some level, and had some genuinely eerie moments, whereas the third was all "::wink wink:: Look how fake all the pirate stuff is!" And there's a fine line between referencing previous games to please continuity nuts and ripping off previous games because you've run out of ideas. Plus I really didn't like the animation or voice of Guybrush--he was so slow and stooped and walked around like a little old lady, plus so pathetic and lame in his voice and mannerisms. My imaginary Guybrush (based on the little pixel shaped Guybrush in the previous games) was more over the top (both in his insane bravery and pathetic wussiness) and less Disney-hero-bland.
Also, I read somewhere that "Pirates of the Caribbean" (the movie) was partially inspired by this game (and both were inspired by the Disney ride)... wonder if that's true. (It would make sense--they've both got a scary villainous ghost pirate, a similarly spirited lead female, and a hapless doofus male lead. Although Guybrush is also sort of Sparrow-like in his weird humor and tendency to be off in his own world and out of step with everyone else, plus his love of piracy...)
Anyway, ultimately the first game was my favorite--the music was awesome, the game was easy to beat without cheating but difficult enough that it wasn't boring, the story was excellent, the characters were entertaining, the humor was always funny, and pretty much everything was charming and smile-inducing. The second game was good story-wise, but too difficult (I had to look up solutions several times, otherwise I'd still be sitting there) and the third was just inane (all about showing off fancy graphics, the characters were lame and irritating, it fucked with continuity, the story didn't make much sense, the humor was forced, and several of the puzzles were stupid--like Guybrush has to find a hammer and two separate sets of nails so that he can nail down a pulldown bed to grab a book that's on top of it, when all he'd really have to do is kneel on the bed to hold it down and then reach over and grab the book!)
I'm not going to bother with the fourth--I've heard it's no better than the third, plus it's got that irritating 3D stuff.
What else...
Oh yeah, Netflix! I watched "Army of Darkness" (I love that movie, and Bruce Campbell rocks so hard). Oh yeah, and "Death to Smoochy," which was very strange, occasionally irritating, but mostly charming. It's worth seeing for Edward Norton in a big pink rhinoceros suit, if nothing else. And I liked the lead female character a lot (how often do I say that!?)--she was mature and layered and interesting, and the actress actually had some depth. Plus, y'know, I sort of identified with Ed Norton's character, trying to get the soy dogs with the gluten-free buns... :)
I also saw "Empire of the Sun," which was interesting. I tried to watch it when I was a kid, but it put me to sleep back then. It was worth watching now, though, especially for Christian Bale's performance. That was definitely one of the best child actor performances I've ever seen--I really kept sinking into the film and believing in the character, whereas usually I'm very consciously aware that I'm watching a child try to act. The story itself was somewhat pretentious and overwrought, but at the same time I liked the ambiguity of it, and the fact that it often let events speak for themselves and have multiple meanings. It's sort of a universal story of a child becoming an adult, and also a metaphorical story about the world entering the nuclear age, and a very human story about the effects of war on ordinary people, and an exploration of class and race...
So yeah, an imperfect, but interesting, film.
*is highly amused*
Also, Bryan Black says:
raymonds been toying around with some new sounds and structures for a couple months to my knowledge
i think he's gonna come back with something great.. maybe i will find out more next week when im in London
*crosses fingers*
Seriously, I've been listening to almost nothing but Raymond's work for the past year (minus a month or so of rediscovering NIN). He is so incredibly talented/creative/brilliant. And he has such an exceptional and large and varied body of work to explore. Plus his music is so deep and layered, which makes it endlessly re-listenable.
I've managed to obtain nearly everything he's released (minus a couple really rare things that I'm still searching for and some expensive things that he only did minor work on) plus a good amount of bootleg material. My friend Mike was over recently and said that I have the best Pig collection he's ever seen, which was way cool since a year ago I was contacting Mike asking which Pig album I should start with. :)
I'm listening to the "No One Gets Out of Her Alive" EP, which is my most recent acquisition. A bunch of the songs are the same as on the U.S. version of "Wrecked" (I still need to get the Japanese version) but it's got some cool new ones including "Jump the Gun" (this has a really fast vocal part that I haven't heard used elsewhere, and a really interesting layering of vocal elements) and "Satanic Panic" (which is mostly made up of cleverly distorted samples of speeches of American Christian religious nuts--it doesn't even have any of Raymond's own words and yet the way he puts together the music and distorts the sound so totally captures his disgust and anger and criticism and dark humor regarding religious extremism).
Anyway... ooh, I beat the first three Monkey Island games! I loved the first two, but the third was kind of lame and stupid. It was like since the technology improved, they had to take every opportunity to show off their fancy animation... which was nice and all, but it slowed down the game and was incredibly tedious for the actual player. Not a good design philosophy. Plus it got too self-referential and fake--the first game tried to immerse you in a pirate world at least on some level, and had some genuinely eerie moments, whereas the third was all "::wink wink:: Look how fake all the pirate stuff is!" And there's a fine line between referencing previous games to please continuity nuts and ripping off previous games because you've run out of ideas. Plus I really didn't like the animation or voice of Guybrush--he was so slow and stooped and walked around like a little old lady, plus so pathetic and lame in his voice and mannerisms. My imaginary Guybrush (based on the little pixel shaped Guybrush in the previous games) was more over the top (both in his insane bravery and pathetic wussiness) and less Disney-hero-bland.
Also, I read somewhere that "Pirates of the Caribbean" (the movie) was partially inspired by this game (and both were inspired by the Disney ride)... wonder if that's true. (It would make sense--they've both got a scary villainous ghost pirate, a similarly spirited lead female, and a hapless doofus male lead. Although Guybrush is also sort of Sparrow-like in his weird humor and tendency to be off in his own world and out of step with everyone else, plus his love of piracy...)
Anyway, ultimately the first game was my favorite--the music was awesome, the game was easy to beat without cheating but difficult enough that it wasn't boring, the story was excellent, the characters were entertaining, the humor was always funny, and pretty much everything was charming and smile-inducing. The second game was good story-wise, but too difficult (I had to look up solutions several times, otherwise I'd still be sitting there) and the third was just inane (all about showing off fancy graphics, the characters were lame and irritating, it fucked with continuity, the story didn't make much sense, the humor was forced, and several of the puzzles were stupid--like Guybrush has to find a hammer and two separate sets of nails so that he can nail down a pulldown bed to grab a book that's on top of it, when all he'd really have to do is kneel on the bed to hold it down and then reach over and grab the book!)
I'm not going to bother with the fourth--I've heard it's no better than the third, plus it's got that irritating 3D stuff.
What else...
Oh yeah, Netflix! I watched "Army of Darkness" (I love that movie, and Bruce Campbell rocks so hard). Oh yeah, and "Death to Smoochy," which was very strange, occasionally irritating, but mostly charming. It's worth seeing for Edward Norton in a big pink rhinoceros suit, if nothing else. And I liked the lead female character a lot (how often do I say that!?)--she was mature and layered and interesting, and the actress actually had some depth. Plus, y'know, I sort of identified with Ed Norton's character, trying to get the soy dogs with the gluten-free buns... :)
I also saw "Empire of the Sun," which was interesting. I tried to watch it when I was a kid, but it put me to sleep back then. It was worth watching now, though, especially for Christian Bale's performance. That was definitely one of the best child actor performances I've ever seen--I really kept sinking into the film and believing in the character, whereas usually I'm very consciously aware that I'm watching a child try to act. The story itself was somewhat pretentious and overwrought, but at the same time I liked the ambiguity of it, and the fact that it often let events speak for themselves and have multiple meanings. It's sort of a universal story of a child becoming an adult, and also a metaphorical story about the world entering the nuclear age, and a very human story about the effects of war on ordinary people, and an exploration of class and race...
So yeah, an imperfect, but interesting, film.