Metal Monday

I hope y’all able to enjoy Labor Day. I am currently approaching a state not unlike nirvana at a Korean spa and hope to gorge myself on hot-wings and fried pickles later in day. Worker solidarity is always a good thing.

YouTube Obsession

2011’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is easily in my top 50 films of all time. It captures aspects of Le Carre’s novel so well; The paranoia, and low-level spy craft. Where the movie goes wrong however: It makes it all look too cool.

The limited series from BBC is so good at depicting the penny-pinching inelegancy and the maudlin malaise of bureaucracy. Just that opening scene, the top top brass, crammed into a room, bumping into furniture and curtains, the staunch meeting-room politeness. It so good.

Because it is a series, it is able to expand on parts of the story the movie (rightly so) had to cut out or breeze through. Really getting to understand all the players’ parts.

Connie Sachs is an emotional loadstone of the books; surrounded by stoic and pompous men, she is refreshingly emotional and erratic. Depicted wonderfully in the movie, I found Beryl Reid’s Sachs from the BBC series to be far superior and more impactful despite having a fraction of the screen-time.

I would be remiss to not mention Alec Guinness’ excellent performance as the ever-pitiable George Smiley. I love Gary Oldman’s, constrained and somewhat doting Smiley, seemingly along for the ride but always pulling the strings. Guinness’ Smiley is more animated (just slightly so), feels more active and headstrong. The two are very apples and oranges, I love the books so much that I’m just excited to have depictions to compare!

The entire BBC series is on YouTube and is very worth watching in these days of overproduced netflix series.

Watching

My partner, continues in their never-ending mission to educate me in the genre of horror. If you’re a reader of my Letterboxd then you already know we’ve been knee deep in the Halloweeen series the past couple weeks. A series that overall, sucks.

The fact that most of the movies suck really speaks to the clarity and excellent vision of that first movie to persist into the present day. Michael Myers is a cool idea, he could be any child in any house in Anytown USA.

I don’t want to talk about each movie individually because after Halloween 3 and up to the 2018 trilogy, they really aren’t worth watching. I will however trash Rob Zombie’s duology from the late 2000’s. These are bad movies that do not understand that simple premise of the original. Giving Michael Myers a backstory, a reason as to why he kills, defeats the purpose of a silent, unstoppable killer.

I have to give props to him in the respect that Rob Zombie continues to get paid to make the movies he wants to make. They are bad, filled with his own psychosis, wife and rockabilly music but he got paid to make TWO of them.

And really, he can do whatever he wants because he gave the world the best one of the best songs/music videos of all time…

ANYWAY….

Donald Pleasence as the paranoid Dr. Loomis is one of the greatest acting performances of all time.

Masterful. All month I have been going around the house, speaking in Loomis affect, darting away like a madman after making statements.

Reading

I was reading Gnomon by Nick Harkaway at the suggestion of Max Read, and the writing is very good. A philosophical sci-fi book that covers many topics concerning society and the nature of privacy. I highly recommend if you like your sci-fi to be heady and sans the clichés so prominent in the genre.

While reading I couldn’t help but think of John Le Carre. The plots within plots, the level of writing not usually seen in the genre, side characters fleshed out by subtle world building, it all felt like a Le Carre novel. Turns out Nick Harkaway is a pen name for Nick Cornwell, son of David Cornwell AKA John Le Carre.

This makes me feel a lot of things but mostly: What did my father pass on to me other than alcoholism? Jkjkljk

But it is so wild that two really excellent writers are father and son.

Playing

Finishing the original Mass Effect was enlightening because I had no idea that it was so bare-bones in comparison to it’s sequels. I say this to highlight how promising this game is as a total product: The fighting mechanics are rigid and boring, the enemy AI is nonexistent, the animations are C3PO stiff and the overall story is boilerplate high-level-getty-museum-clean sci-fi. Yet somehow, all these factors and excellent small story moments make for a game that -had I played it back in 2007- would have hotly anticipated a sequel.

Mass Effect 2, not only delivered on that promise but exceeds on almost every level. First off, when I think of memorable game openings a few come to mind (BioShock, Half-Life, Portal 2), but ME2’s opening set piece is by far and away one of my favorites. I remember replaying through that opening several times before settling down into a proper playthrough. It not only represents the tonal shift of the sequel¹ but also showcases the bump in production quality. Just in the opening, the animations look so much better, dialog feels more natural, the VA is amazing and the stakes are set high. Overall, combat is improved immensely and enemy AI is smarter and makes fights more interesting.

I have played ME2 multiple times, many different ways and I swear by this: Renegade Fem-Shep is one of the best video game characters I have ever played. She is written so well and Jennifer Hale’s VA is absolutely incredible as a mean space woman. I highly recommend playing this way, you will not regret it.

Other Notables

** Notes from our dystopian hell-scape

** Are we witnessing the downfall of Mr. Beast? Hopefully.

**sometimes mash-ups work

1 

1  This is definitely the dark sequel à la The Empire Strikes Back.