I won’t lie, we thought about stopping the movie several times, but we eventually made it until the end. The acting is bad, the scenario is ridiculous, the camera work is pathetic and the effects are among the worse I’ve ever seen.
Yet, as we are comfortably installed in our living room, far from the dangers of the US West Coast, we both agree: we had a good evening watching Sharknado.
As I was searching for a screenshot to use in the post, I stumbled upon this image:
Really, sharks in space? Now, that makes me wanna watch the next chapters.
Another consequence of the Covid Pandemic was the cancellation of the Eurovision Song Contest and that’s super sad because it’s one of the best evening of the year.
Thanks to this movie, we had a taste of our favourite contest. It may not have filled the gap, but the duo Ferrell-McAdams made us laugh and brought a welcome Eurosong touch to this disastrous year.
Lately, we’ve seen contestants trying to adapt their act to the standards of nowadays pop music… But Fire Saga reflects what I think Eurovision is about: a celebration of individuality where people from all over Europe bring something different.
This TV-show brought me back to the time I’ve played “Detroit: become Human”, I remember going crazy by the way humans were treating the androids in this game. Westworld does the exact same thing, all I wanted was for the robots to have their revenge.
Imagine being stuck in a park where rich creeps can play out their rapist and murder fantasies on you over and over again, this is downright atrocious. I strongly believe that from the moment you create a life, whether it’s a robot, AI, or android, this very being needs to be treated with respect. Humans tend to treat everything that is different from them as a threat, an enemy. They are so afraid to loose control, that they would rather destroy anything that is different from them than learning to coexist.
This is such a deep and philosophical subject, Chris and I can talk for hours about this, but I’m not going to go there because this post would become an insanely long rant. The true plot of the story is that they uploaded “reveries” which means that the robots can have memories, these memories create emotions, and because of these emotions, they can deviate from the paths that were coded and uploaded in their system. An intricate topic with tons of plot twists that I didn’t see coming.
The casting is excellent, Anthony Hopkins (Dr. Robert Ford), Evan Rachel Wood (Dolores Abernathy), and especially Thandie Newton, a complete badass in her role as Maeve Millay. Here’s one of her quotes:
Maeve Millay: [to Sylvester and Lutz] All my life, I’ve prided myself on being a survivor. But surviving is just another loop. I’m getting out of here. You two are going to help me.
Sylvester: No. Do, do you know how far these people will go to protect their IP? Every part of this building, including the skin on your back, is made to keep you here. It, it’d be a suicide mission.
Maeve Millay: At first, I thought you and the others were gods. Then I realized you’re just men. And I know men. You think I’m scared of death? I’ve done it a million times. I’m fucking great at it. How many times have you died? Because if you don’t help me I’ll kill you.
The show reminds me somehow of a real life MMORPG, where NPC’s relive their same fate over and over again. Humans are just guests in the NPC’s home world which is nothing more than an amusement park that provides an escapism from those guests’ real life.
On another note, I also absolutely loved the music and the player piano rolls used throughout the entire season. Some of the instrumental covers include songs of The Cure, Soundgarden, The Rolling Stones, Radiohead,… I’ve read on IMDb that the repetitive three-chord phrase, often heard in the background music, comes from Westworld (1973), where it underscored the Gunslinger’s slow but relentless pursuit of the hero. I really like this tune, it reminds me a lot of Carpenters’ music. It makes me wonder if season 2 will be as musical as the first one!
There is so much more that I could elaborate and mention about this topic, but I need to draw a line somewhere so, I’ll end this post with one more quote that is mentioned repeatedly throughout this season:
“These violent delights have violent ends” – Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet
A few years ago, Chris and I finished watching all seasons of Bates Motel. We were in awe from the beginning to the end, and felt sad when the story ended. Somewhere in June, I was searching Netflix for a new thing to watch while crocheting when I stumbled upon Bates Motel, I instantly pushed the button “play from the beginning”. This TV-show is even better than I remembered, there’s so much that I had already forgotten.
While watching the show, I couldn’t help myself but be awestruck by the little town of White Pine Bay. The nature looks so beautiful, it always makes me envious for huge hikes in a forest so, I looked up where the TV-show was shot. Apparently the original story of Bates Motel takes place in California, the TV-show however moved the infamous hotel to a fictional town in Oregon. While reading about the actual location of the shooting, it appears that the filming took place in Vancouver and British Columbia. Well, Oregon or not, the place looks beautiful and that’s that.
The casting is excellent, Vera Farmiga (Norma Bates), Freddie Highmore (Norman Bates), Ryan Hurst (Chick Hogan) being amongst some of my favourite characters. Apparently, Ryan Hurst thought his role as Chick was too similar to other characters he had played before, so he accepted the role with the condition that he could make it personal. The result was amazing, I’m glad that he was given that opportunity. I’ve also read that Vera Farmiga was the one that suggested Freddie Highmore for the role of Norman. Those two were absolutely perfect in their role. I can’t imagine anyone else pronouncing the word “mother” as sickly and disturbing as Mr. Highmore does.
On a finishing note, here’s my favourite quote of Norma Bates: “When I moved here, no one prepared me for the colossal, frickin’ face-dive off a cliff that living in this crazy town really is!”. Even though I think that Vera Farmiga is an excellent actress in each role that she plays, she really kills it as Norma Bates. Whoever did the casting deserves an award.
My first week back at the office felt horrible. The day before the big come back, my left ear got inflamed, probably because of allergies, so I felt like crap before it even begun. I also had a little problem under my right foot which made walking painful. At the office, people didn’t care much about social distancing, I spent the day walking backwards to keep a safe distance. As if it wasn’t enough, I had an allergic reaction to soy (my kryptonite) on Friday.
Happily, we can now swim in Animal Crossing: New Horizons and it is super fun, especially doing cannonballs and meeting Pascal, the wisdom otter.
It seems that I’ve been catching back on games that were on my list for much too long. It may have to do with the fact that we’ve quit a long-played MMORPG that was taking all our precious free time…
The very first game that I’ve ever completed in my life was Maniac Mansion on C64. From the moment that I had figured how to use the key that was hidden under the doormat to open the front door, I was sold to point-and-click games. Since then, I’ve been playing a lot of them, mostly on Amiga and PC.
Even if many of these games are excellent, my favourite ones have always been those developped by Ron Gilbert. So, it is no surprise that I highly enjoyed playing Thimbleweed Park. I love everything about it, the graphics, the setting, the characters, the music, the voices, the sense of humour and the dialogs. Thimbleweed Park is very high on my top ten favourite games of all times, it could actually be my number one.
Things I didn’t know about the game:
Many names found in the game’s phone book are from Kickstarter backers from around the world. When you call their numbers, you will hear individual messages from them;
Dr. Fred, Nurse Edna, and one of the tentacles from the game Maniac Mansion attend Ransom’s performance;
Ransom’s insults are censored. However, for 0,79€, you can purchase a DLC that enables the unbeeped voice;
Last week, during the first heatwave of this summer, Chris and I were dreaming about a good refreshing frappuccino. The first time we’ve drank this cold delight was years ago at Starbucks, when they still had a lactose free version of this drink. Years later, we’re still craving for a cold “coffee” beverage for summer so, we decided to order a blender that can crush ice, and make a perfect frappuccino.
Yesterday was quite a hot Saturday, too hot to do anything so, we’ve been lazying up, hanging in the couch while sipping from our jar of frappuccino, and re-watching Breaking Bad.
After a few experiments, this is our favourite recipe until now (for 2 persons):
2 cups of coffee;
2 cups of lactose free milk;
4 teaspoons of sugar;
12 ice cubes.
It’s very easy to make, just throw all the ingredients into the blender, and a few seconds later it’s done. I know that a lot of people add whipped cream, and a whole bunch of other stuff, but both Chris and I prefer our food as simple as possible.
Yesterday was an amazing day, and I’m ready to have more of those. Let the summer begin!
Friday was warm, so warm that our traditional pizza-gaming eve got replaced by a pizza-movie eve. But what movie to watch when there’s barely any air to breathe?
I don’t know why we decided to watch The King of Staten Island… To be honest, the trailer and the tattoos were probably the selling point. Anyway, we watched it with greater pleasure than we anticipated. The King of Staten Island created a nice chill vibe over our week-end and it still hasn’t left.
While not much happens, the ambiance is great and Scott is a very attaching character with an amazing t-shirt collection, his sense of humour was balancing perfectly the dramatic undertones of the movie.
Yesterday, while watching an episode of Westworld, I thought about how cool it would be if point-and-click games would use an AI… Instead of scripted characters who are always at the same place, saying the same things, we could find them speaking to each other, wander around, have different dialog lines following their moods.
For example, we would enter Thimbleweed Park and Delores could be home but she could also be at the arcade or at the dinner, living her own life.
Of course, there would be boundaries, for the sake of the story, but everything else would be left to the AI. I could spend days looking at game characters interact with the environment and with each other in a completely unpredictable and unscripted way.
