Spring

It has arrived.  It was a long awaited event (since last November).  This past week I have had to wear three different jackets to go outside.  My normal winter one, a light jacket but very warm; a spring/summer jacket; and my warmest winter jacket.  Our weather continues to be all over the map in the way of temperatures.  We were able to add another day to our sub-zero daily highs, making it 52 now.  Sudbury had a major snowstorm, along with a lot of the American Midwest, with nearly 20" of new snow.  That should keep them white until at least May.  We had a few flakes, but the cold really took a bite out of our spring bulbs.  Hopefully they will survive.  So far only snowdrops have bloomed.  We are considerably behind this year.

 

It's kind of funny/odd, but just as our thoughts are able to turn once again to travel a new war begins, driving up the price of jet fuel and making airfares even more pathetic.  Depending on Deb's next two blood work results, we had hoped to cross the Atlantic again.  It would be our first time since 2019.  Possible destinations include Iceland (a shorter jaunt), Vienna (a longer stay) and, of course, London.  But now who knows?  I had to fill up the gas tank on our vehicle yesterday, and it wasn't pretty.  At least there were no lineups at the pump.

 

We also have a very expensive house fix coming up March 30th, as we will get our radon problem mitigated.  Readings this winter went sky high, so it's time to fix it.  We (mostly Deb) have been doing a house clearing, something that happens every five years or so around here.  This time we are serious to get things down to a manageable level, making a possible move not only easier but more likely.  There are several large apartment blocks in Amherstburg with a river view, so we likely wouldn't go far.

 

In PC gaming news, my wishlist continues to shrink as Steam sales continue.  Great games can be had very cheaply if one awaits the frequent sales.  I recently collected six great older games, paying less than $35 Can.  I also added a few perks to my Train Sim World collection.  After completing Black Mirror, we have moved on to a newer Sherlock Holmes game called The Awakened.   It is an updated version of a 2008 game and is extremely complex and difficult to learn.  We nearly gave up on it a few times, but have used a walkthru to get through parts.  It uses about half the keyboard for commands and thus has a very long learning curve.  We are improving, and have played a few segments with no help.  Holmes and Watson are up against Cthulhu no less!

 

Screenshot of a young Holmes from The Awakened, a game for PC. 

 

In film news, Deb has completed her most recent one.  It took almost two months longer than expected due to her illness, but once she recovered things moved along well.  It is another great looking (and sounding) film, and will likely do well at festivals.  Watch for it on her website soon (her website link is in my upper left margin, top of this page).

 

In film watching news, we have completed all 30 episodes of Apple TV's Foundation.  The final episode was a trope-filled wonder, with extreme violence and sadism galore.  Of course another series is forthcoming, someday, which will cover all three books.  From what I have read about the series the further along it gets the less it has to do with Asimov's novels.  It is a great looking series, taking lessons from recent Star Trek series, and no doubt from Game of Thrones.  For my money there are too many characters, too many sub plots, too much violent conflict and too little science.  Asimov did not write a fantasy of the future; he wrote a science-based work of fiction.  But we all know that TV viewers are too dumb to care much about science.  Besides, it's more fun watching things blow up.  I will get around to the first Asimov book of the series in the very near future.

 

We also completed a multi-season travel series hosted by Eugene Levy.  Called The Reluctant Traveler the Canadian actor is supposedly brought out of his deep shell by the experiences he undergoes.  However, he travels in five star luxury, meets up with important locals who show him around, and gets to see things other travelers never would see.  For example, on his visit to London he spends 4/5ths of the time in Windsor in conversation with Prince William.  It's fascinating to see a future king being so candid with Eugene, but really, a travel show?  Hardly.  He gets a private tour of the palace and grounds, then goes into town and has a pint at the pub with William.  Ah yes, just like our visits to England.

 

And we have completed watching all 4 seasons of Monty Python's Flying Circus.  When it's good it's very good.  But when it's bad, it's very racist, sexist and hardly funny at all.  Still, every episode offers up something memorable and hilarious. We have now moved on now to another comedy classic series, Second City TV, with some of Canada's funniest comics (John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Catherine O'Hara, Eugene Levy and many others).  We also managed to get through all three seasons of the original Addams Family series.  This stuff is usually lunch time viewing, as we eat.

 

In film news there are two to report.  One of them should have been trashy and the other classy, but as things turned out, our expectations were incorrect.  Women of Devil's Island is from 1962, part of our "Drive In Classics" DVD library.  It sounds like an exploitation film, and there are certainly a lot of beautiful women in it.  However, it is a swashbuckler and a bit of fun viewing.  The women are prisoners of the revolution, sent there after their families were murdered or exiled.  They are badly misused by a cruel and sadistic warden.  A pirate ship comes by and attempts to steal the gold that the women work so hard to mine.  In the process they also attempt to rescue the women.  For the most part the women stick together and help defeat the prison guards.  Sisterhood has never looked so brave and noble.  Hurrah for the women of Devil's Island!  While there are a few heaving bosoms, it is mostly the fancy feminine hairstyles that viewers will be drawn to.

 

From our classic DVD collection. 

 

Lastly comes Lancelot du Lac, a Goddard film from 1974.  Possibly regarded as a good film, it isn't.  The actors say their lines like a class of high school kids who don't want to be in drama class.  The men wear armour all of the time, a ridiculous look and even more ridiculous sound.  Horses gallop, jousts and battles take place off screen, the two lovers don't seem much in love, and blood spurts from all directions at times.  The film is quite tedious.  Watch John Boorman's Excaliber instead.

 

Showing on Criterion. 

 

Mapman Mike

 

 

 

 

 

Frozen in Time

We are entering week 2 of some of the coldest temps I have ever experienced down here in the deep south of Canada.  How cold?  We hit -10 F last weekend.  It hasn't improved very much, and will remain cold into early February at the least.  We were supposed to dodge the major storm that hit the US and Toronto really hard.  When the forecast got updated we were in the 1" to 3" of new snow.  When it got updated again we were in the 3" to 6" category.  We ended up getting about 4" of snow on Sunday, and I spent Monday taking the shoveling in small stages.  It is so cold out that even being outside for a short time fully dressed for weather is unpleasant.  At least the shoveling keeps the body heat coming.  I burned some serious calories today!

Charles Herold is a man who used to write PC game reviews for the New York Times.  Before he landed that job he and I had met on-line somewhere to discuss and argue about games.  Though we agreed on many game-related topics, we also disagreed on several fronts.  I remember really liking the PC game RAMA, for example, while he found it a waste of time.  Anyway, I found him on FB and we have reconnected, already having some decent discussions about games.  He really did not like Syberia, and though I wasn't crazy about the 2nd and 3rd games in that series, the newest one is terrific.  I also really liked the first one.  Latest topics are adventure game frustrations, which are legion in many games.  Good to hear from you again, Charles!

 

We are replaying MYST III at the moment, and I've been going through my vast adventure game collection.  I have an enormous CD/DVD collection of games, as well as a whole slew stored on Steam and more on Humble Bundle.  Though we have continued to play PC games over the years, my interest seems to be peaking once again.  It seems to be the golden age of PC adventure games, with some absolutely stunning video games coming out recently.

 

In TV and movie news we are now watching Season 2 of Foundation.  It seems to be stuck in a rut, and is tending towards Star Wars and Star Trek more and more often.  We shall see.  It doesn't seem to bear a lot of resemblance to anything Asimov wrote.

 

A Traveler's Needs is a 2024 film from South Korea directed by Hong Sang-Soo and starring Isabel Huppert.  Much of the film is painfully bad cinema, as a woman from France with apparently no reason to be in Korea is taken in by a sympathetic student to share his small flat.  She has two women who wish to learn French and she sets out to teach them.  With no idea how to teach, or any pedagogical basis for what she is doing, she hungrily takes their cash and gives them ridiculously bad lessons.  When the young man's mother visits him and discovers he is sheltering a strange older woman from France, she freaks out.  This is probably the best part of the film, the confrontation between her and her son.  The film drags on with a second student, as the woman and her husband extend warm hospitality to her and show her some sights around Seoul.  The part where she is sitting alone and mindlessly tooting on a recorder is quite painful to watch.  A movie to avoid.

 

Showing on Mubi. 

 

Next came two shlocky feautures from our DVD collection.  Welcome To Blood City is a 1977 SF/Western film, a collaboration between Canada and the UK.  It stars Jack Palance in one of his standard heavy breathing bad guy roles, Keir Dullea, Samantha Eggar and Barry Morse.  A psychological experiment is taking place, and Dullea has been inserted into a deadly role to see if he can stand the heat and solve problems on his feet.  A futuristic man is needed to help get the world out of trouble, and the search for such a leader is on-going.  Mostly the film is a western, filmed in Ontario near Kleinburg.  There are lots of men hanging around with nothing to do.  The saloon is always packed.  There is plenty of killing, lots of saloon girls, slaves who aren't citizens yet, and any number of bullies just asking for it.  Eggar plays a female scientist who inserts herself into the scenario to influence the outcome.  Tiresome and often jaw-dropping in its badness, this one must have gone straight to the video shelves on stores.

 

A great poster probably helped video rentals.  From our collection. 

 

Future Hunters (1988) was another direct to video release.  The spear that pierced Jesus is sought by many people, including a scientist.  One of his female students and her boyfriend get caught up in a frenzy of travel and action.  Though filmed mostly in the Philipines, setting include the US, Hong Kong (some location shots were taken here) and Manila and surrounding jungle.  There are so many many "Huh?" moments in this film, including a sudden transition during a car chase from night to broad daylight.  The heroine, a slender California blonde, manages to run through the jungle in high heels, fight and defeat a much stronger Amazon warrior, and most impressive of all she manages to mostly keep her sole white dress on through much of the film.  It is a bit tattered by the end.  There are some good scenes in Hong Kong with Bruce Li kicking some kung fu butt, but overall this is an empty imitation of Mad Max at the beginning, and Indiana Jones throughout.  Why does the evil bad guy always laugh at everything?  The film is from our 50 DVD collection called Sci-fi Invasion.

 

From our DVD collection.
 

 

Mapman Mike 

 

 

 

Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy: An Apple TV Event

Winter is taking a brief respite today and tomorrow.  It's been cold.  How cold?  So far this season we have already had 16 days where the temp did not go above 0 C.  Some years we don't get that many cold days in an entire winter!  And it's still Autumn for another few days.  Often we don't get any until early to mid-January.  So it has been cold, though mostly snowless.  We've had an inch here and a half inch there, but not enough to ski or toboggan.  It's mostly gone now, and it will rain tomorrow.

Solstice preparations are made as we await the big event.  Hopefully we will see a sunrise and a sunset, though it's a very cloudy time of year over here.  Special food was brought in last night, and I only have one more small log to chop into firewood for the all day fire.  Aside from food and drink there will be music, this year the opera "Gotterdammerung", Act 1.  We'll hear Act 2 New Years Eve, and Act 3 at the full moon just after that date.  There might be some gaming, too.  Deb bought a new board game recently, adding to our already vast collection.  "Classic Art" is for 2-5 people.  More about it after we've played it.  We also have a Carcassonne tournament in progress, with Deb ahead 3 games to 2 in our best of 7 series.

 

With a lack of medical appointments of late we've been able to stay home a lot.  As a result the piano pieces are nearly ready for prime time, and Deb has been progressing with her latest film.  Tomorrow is actual filming day.  Yours truly will be the camera man for some of it.  My foot still bothers me, but slowly improves.  I am walking about 4 miles per week on the treadie just now, increasing the distance ever so slowly.  On soft ground I can walk for much longer, but on pavement I am still quite limited.

 

In film news there are three to report, before getting on to Foundation.  We watched Bi Gan's 2nd feature film, called Long Days Journey Into Night.  From 2018, here is the blurb from Criterion:

 

Bi Gan’s dazzling sophomore feature is a hallucinatory, noir-tinged stunner about a lost soul (Huang Jue) on a quest to find a missing woman from his past (Tang Wei). Following leads across Guizhou province, he crosses paths with a series of colorful characters, among them a prickly hairdresser played by Taiwanese superstar Sylvia Chang. When the search leads him to a dingy movie theater, the film launches him—and us—into an epic, gravity-defying sequence, an immersive, hour-long odyssey through a labyrinthine dreamscape that ranks as one of the true marvels of modern cinema. China’s biggest art-house hit of all time, LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT confirms Bi as one the most daring and exciting auteurs working today. 

 

Deb really took to the film, while I remain a bit cool towards it.  The photography is amazing, as are the locations used.  I liked his first film more than this one, though I would certainly watch this again.  We are anxious to see his 3rd and latest film, now out in a few theatres, called Ressurection.

 

Now showing on Criterion, along with his first film Kaili Blues. 

 

Only The River Flows is a Chinese film from 2023, directed by Wei Shujun.  The Criterion caption:

 

When a woman’s body washes up on the shore in small-town China in the 1990s, the local chief of police, Ma Zhe (Zhu Yilong), is tasked with leading the investigation. An obvious suspect leads to a hasty arrest, though the mystery lingers in Ma Zhe’s mind. What kind of darkness is truly at play here? As torrents of rain envelop the town, Ma Zhe will be drawn to the edge of madness in pursuit of truth. Both a tantalizing cinematic puzzle and a sharp-edged portrait of provincial paranoia, Wei Shujun’s ultra-atmospheric, retro-stylized noir captures the pulpy proceedings in gritty, textured film grain that goes beyond period recreation to fully evoke the look and feel of a bygone era.

 

I liked the film for its portrayal of a cop who is psychologically damaged by the case he is on.  With more bodies piling up then in an episode of Morse, each twist of the plot causes the detective to go a bit further off the deep end.  By the finish he is hallucinating and having lucid dreams, in one of which he shoots the murderer four times.  When he tells his superior that he has shot the criminal, he is asked to empty his gun.  It is still full of bullets. He is also having some domestic issues, with he pregnant wife having a good chance of delivering a seriously damaged child.  The scene with the cold and time-pressed female doctor is only one unforgettable scene among many.  Again situated far from the capital or well known Chinese city, the climate can only be described as horrendous, as heavy rains occur almost daily.  Well worth catching for crime film fans.

 

Now showing on Criterion. 

 

Mariner of the Mountains is a Brazil/France film from 2021 by Karim Anouiz.  His father came from a mountain village in Algeria and his mother from Brazil.  He was born in Algeria, but left when very young with his mother to Brazil.  Dad was supposed to follow but never did.  He now lives in France.  Karim travels from Marseilles to Algiers by boat, exploring the city for his first time.  Then he moves on to his father's village where he meets some relatives.  This is a very personal documentary about one man's search for his roots, and really doesn't involve us very much.  Having said that, the photography of Algiers and the few villages we visit, including many of the people, is nothing less than transcending.  Far from being a travelogue, many of the images are memorable and the people photogenic.  We do for a time feel as if we are a silent partner on this journey, though we eventually get left behind.  At its root it is a home movie of a man's search for part of himself, though of course it is much more than that.  Well worth catching if you have wished to visit Algiers (my hand gets raised).

 

Now showing on Mubi. 

 

Lastly, we have watched 5 episodes of Apple TV's Foundation series, based on the 3 volumes of stories and novellas by Isaac Asimov.  I read the series in late high school years, when I was devouring everything "trilogy".  I remember practically nothing about the books except that I quite liked it.  So a reread is obviously in order.  There are three seasons worth of TV viewing (a 4th is in the works), ten episodes per season, and about an hour per episode.  We have traveled through 5 hours of 30 so far, being halfway through Season One.  It is big budget stuff, having to match effects with Rings of Power and Game of Thrones.  Of course it is all dead serious stuff, with some recreational sex thrown in, I suppose, to lighten the mood.  It doesn't help much.  Even the sex is too serious.  The current Foundation (all humans--no aliens in the books) is ruled by clones of the original Emperor: one is older and has passed power over to the middle clone, with a young one on hand to watch things for when it is his turn.  These clones have offered nothing new in hundreds of years and the society, especially in the outer regions of the planetary collective, is growing restless and resistive.  So we have terrorists attacking the Empire, which rules mostly by fear and punishment.  Watching the terrorists take down the Empire so easily makes one wonder how they have been able to have control for so long.  Two bombs and the miles high sky bridge that leads into orbit is destroyed, and later one shot from a space canon takes down a massive Empire warship.  Though the upcoming fall of the Empire has been mathematically proved, it is mostly disbelieved.  However, a 2nd Foundation is being set up to try and help survivors when the first Foundation does crumble.  So far its pretty good, especially in the looks department.  As I don't recall the Asimov version I can't say right now how close the books are being followed.  We will, at the very least, finish off Season One.

 

We are halfway through Season One. 

 

Mapman Mike