A quick post to say that we had a lot of fun watching this year’s Eurovision Song Contest (yes, we’re fans!). Even if last year’s movie was great, it didn’t replace the real thing. This year’s contest was amazing, the setting was great, a lot of participants were actually quiet good (Iceland, Israel, Ukraine and Lithuania) and the presenters were better than usual.
However, I don’t know what made me the most happy, to see Italy win, since it was our favorite band of the evening or to see France lose, which is always very satisfying. French people are the worse winners/losers ever and their song was horrible and boring, I couldn’t have hoped for more. Sometimes, the universe goes your way.
We’ve both been playing Valheim for a month and we’re having a blast. I can’t believe how deep and huge the game is, for only 16,00€ and a single Go of disk space. Combining survival, crafting and progression through gearing and boss hunting is brilliant. Also, we love Vikings!
Even if the two games are very different, Valheim sometimes reminds me of my vanilla WoW experience, where I had to make sure that I was packed with consumables and that my gear was repaired before going to explore a huge world filled with enemies. Sometimes, you can face a mob or two and, sometimes, you have to run to avoid a troll because your gear is not strong enough…
I must say that the first few hours were brutal… Going in blind, we had no idea of what to do and we did a lot of stupid things, like throwing weapons away when they only needed to be repaired. But one guide has change everything for us: David Allen’s Complete Valheim Written Guide. First, as the title says, it is a written guide, which is so much better than a Youtube video that you have to watch for an hour, while taking notes. You can use the guide as your companion to learn how to defeat the bosses, but also how to build your first house, how to use your first cart,… In short, all you need to know to survive your journey.
Of course, we don’t follow it literally, we also spent a lot of time increasing the safety of our main base by digging a moat. We take our time, it’s almost 100 days and we haven’t killed the Elder yet. Valheim gives us the freedom to adapt our game time to our moods. Sometimes we wanna fight and we venture in the Black Forest and sometimes we just wanna chill after a hard day of work, so we keep gathering mats, cooking food and crafting stuff.
I have the feeling that we’re going to spend a lot of time in Valheim, at our own pace.
Another Corsair part has been replaced from our PCs. We both had a Corsair RM850x, Inge’s PSU started to become very noisy at launch and mine regularly vibrated after longer use. We decided to go for a Be Quiet! Dark Power 12 850w. Not only was the setup much easier because the cables are shielded in a single sleeve, but the noise levels are incredibly lower. Now, they’re not really in the same category, the Be Quiet PSU is Titanium certified while the Corsair one is only Gold, with a price difference of 100€.
One myth I’d like to debunk is that, in our times, all manufacturers are equal and that you should only purchase the parts that are within your price range. I’ve always remained loyal to a few brands like Asus, Noctua or Gskill, except for this build. I thought that I could experiment a bit, by using more Corsair and EVGA parts, which I’ve almost entirely replaced during the last year.
So, if I have to give an advice to anyone building a PC these days: stay away form Corsair, their marketing makes it look like a premium product, but it’s nothing more than low grade hardware wrapped in shiny plastic with led lights. As for EVGA, they may have stellar reviews but on 4 GPUs I’ve used in 6 years, 3 have died within the first year, while I still have to see an ASUS fail.
A year ago, Soforah and I started to rebuild a collection of our absolute favourite shows on Blu-ray. Streaming services regularly remove shows from their catalogues and I simply couldn’t live without DS9, Voyager or The Next Generation. We just don’t buy any show, only the ones that we often rewatch.
Anyway, here we were, cosily installed in our coach, when the first thing that plays out of our Blu-ray player is an ad for another show, then another one and, finally, a third ad before we can finally access the menu.
This makes me want to go nuts, and I mean Homelander nuts on the people at Universal. Are they fucking kidding?! In a world where people almost don’t buy physical editions anymore, where people prefer to go on Pirate Bay instead of paying, we still purchase your stuff and how do you reward us? With 3 ads before the show. That is the definition of a dick move!
Three backpackers decide to have a road trip in the Australia outbacks. At some point, their car refuses to start and they are stranded in Wolf Creek. Later that night, a local approaches them and offers to repair their car. After a few hours towing in the dark Australian desert, they finally arrive at his place and fall asleep, only to wake up to their worst nightmare.
This time, no American hillbillies, it all happens in Australia. Naturally, we were a bit scared, Australian horror is often a hit or miss (and we witnessed more misses than hits). But Wolf Creek is great, it manages to replace the often goofy killer by a very creepy psychopath.
John Jaratt, well known in Australia at the time as the host of a gardening show, is a method actor and spent weeks living in the Australian desert preparing for the role of Mick Taylor. In addition he also avoided bathing before shooting so he would have a much more rugged appearance.
At one point during the shooting of the scene where Mick is torturing Kristy whilst Liz looks through the window, director Greg McLean wanted to get a shot of Cassandra’s POV, so he cleared the crew out of the shed in which the scene was being shot, leaving only the two actors inside. When he called action, they began playing the scene, however, after a minute, Mclean became convinced that Jarratt had gone too far and that Morassi’s cries for help were genuine. He burst into the shed only to find both actors stunned at the disruption. Morassi was fine – it had simply been the intensity of her performance which had fooled Mclean.
Unbeknown to the crew the abandoned mine where they chose to film had actually been the site of the real life murder of a woman. The filming prompted a protest from locals who erroneously thought the film was about those events.
A very eerie coincidence occurred for the second unit crew sent out to get footage of the Wolf Creek Crater. Since the location was many hours from any town the small crew decided to camp out in their car at the site after shooting. During the night a mysterious stranger showed up in a truck to investigate. The stranger indeed looked very much like the character of Mick Taylor, right down to the rustic truck. The stranger left, but the crew was so spooked that they drove an hour down the road before finally stopping to camp for the night. (source: IMDB)
Wolf Creek became Australia’s highest grossing R rated film with a box office achievements of $5,970,770.
I actually have a nephew who moved to Australia a few years ago… So, Thomas, if you read this, avoid the outbacks, don’t trust the locals and don’t drink their water.
Ensconced in her sprawling San Jose, California mansion, eccentric firearm heiress Sarah Winchester (Dame Helen Mirren) believes she is haunted by the souls of people killed by the Winchester repeating rifle. (source: IMDB)
I have absolutely nothing to say about this movies, except that it was too slow and the dialogues, especially the ones of Sarah Winchester, were way too long. I fought not to fall asleep and I eventually lost the battle. Two weeks have passed since we’ve watched the movie and I already forgot half of it. I’m writing this post to make sure that we don’t watch it a second time in a few years.
A theater in Montreal, Quebec was supposed to play Pokémon: Detective Pikachu (2019), but this film played instead, causing the children in the audience to run out crying.
I don’t think that an horror movie ever had me cry, unless it was really bad and I cried out of boredom, which isn’t the case of this movie. Ok, it isn’t as frightening as the other movies in The Conjuring universe, but we had a good Saturday evening. It follows a simple pattern: kids are cursed – evil comes for them – the mother finds a priest who can help – big fight – evil is vanquished. Even if it isn’t really original, it worked and we didn’t fall asleep before the end.
Five college graduates rent a cabin in the woods and begin to fall victim to a horrifying flesh-eating virus, which attracts the unwanted attention of the homicidal locals. (source: IMDB)
I understand the success of Cabin Fever, this is quality old school horror. Eli Roth combined all that we love: the blood, the sex, the naked hot chick, the dumb jock, the cool guy and our beloved rednecks with shotguns. But that’s not all, the movie still manages to put a new spin on things by introducing a flesh-eating virus into the story. Apparently, Eli Roth originally got the idea for this movie while working in Iceland on a horse farm. He got such a bad skin infection from the rotting hay in the barn that his face broke out in sores, bled and peeled off when he shaved.
Not only is the movie great for a Saturday evening but it also defines the quality standard for a good slasher movie. Too bad that the rest of the franchise doesn’t follow the same path. Only the original is directed by Eli Roth, the others only share the title and are total garbage.
For the featured image, I was shared between a picture of Eli Roth and Jordan Ladd together (both also play in Death Proof), or a picture of bikini Jordan Ladd. Why not both?
Also, sentences like “This rifle is for the niggers” or “I shoot squirrels because they’re gay” would probably attract a lot of fire by the nowadays crowd. That makes me love this movie even more because I’m getting sick of the politically correct.
Mastodon is probably the best prog-metal band in the world and, among Mastodon’s albums, Once More ‘Round the Sun is our favourite. Not only has the band a load of amazing songs, they also have fantastic videos and our favourite is Asleep in the Deep. It’s the epic journey of an ordinary house cat who meanders into a demonic catacomb filled with dark lord bullfrogs, terrifying rat kings and a brave warrior squirrel.
The clip’s co-director/conceptualist Skinner (who’s also the cover artist for the 2014 LP) said: “This concept was birthed out of my curiosity about what a cat really does at night while we are asleep,” Skinner says in a statement. “Where do they go? Cats have a very mysterious myth to them and I thought it would be cool to explore that, as little nocturnal heroes. I decided to put a sort of Joseph Campbell hero myth spin on it and add some Jodorowsky psychedelia as well. I’m more than excited about the way it came out! I love it!”. (source: RollingStone)
Well, we love it too. As a matter of fact, it is our favourite video-clip ever!
“An inheritance leads a young man and his friends to an abandoned resort inhabited by two sketchy caretakers and a clan of mutant cannibals.” (source: IMDB)
The final chapter is the worst of the entire franchise. It isn’t as bad as to stop the movie before the end, but it’s far from the quality of the other instalments. The Wrong Turn vibe is missing, it has been replaced by a slow plot that isn’t even rewarded by fun kills. The other chapters were about watching tourists getting slaughtered in a good slasher tradition, Last resort is about the weird reproduction of hillbilly cannibals.
The film does increase the nudity with the four different actresses taking off their clothes and there’s also some pretty weird and kinky sexual stuff going on. As for our three main killers, it’s without a doubt the most boring use of them in the series.
If you’re a fan of the show, watch it, for the sake of completion, but it isn’t representative of the franchise, at all.
