Piano Repertoire

 February is off to a brutally cold start, though we are still very limited in the amount of snow we have received this year.  I'm sure that will arrive later in the month.  Still, we are hopeful that things will begin to end by the middle of the month.  It went briefly above freezing yesterday, before crashing to today's brutal tempts.  46 days so far with no rise above freezing, and several more in a row coming up this weekend.  Even if we did have a lot of snow it would be too cold to snowshoe.

 

I have a new family doctor, since my doctor moved away.  He is very thorough.  He sent me for a heart stress test and it went well yesterday.  Everything seems to be working as it should.  Huzzah!  Deb is urgently awaiting an iron transfusion, one of two that she needs asap.  We are still waiting for an appointment, hopefully early in the coming week.  She is very tired and run down and her breathing worsens weekly.  She is able to work on her film, but far less intensely than before.  Fingers crossed.

 

In gaming news we are currently playing two games on PC.  TR-49 is a brand new game where the player has to get a very old computer working again.  It has jumbled a lot of books and information and we are supposed to unscramble things.  We have uncovered about a fifth of what we need to do.  It's quite interesting in some ways, and quite boring in others.  There is no travel--you sit in front of an old computer (the Bletchley one, lying forgotten and disused) and do research.  The other game is the original Black Mirror from 2003.  I played it many years ago and am replaying it now.  There are two sequels which are also quite good, and a remaster of the one I'm now playing which I also look forward to trying.  This is Deb's first time, though she undoubtedly helped me with some puzzles in my original playthrough.

 

This is how the screen looks in TR-49.  Our score is at the top right.  Notes are kept by the game automatically (below right).  We are down in a basement, possibly inside the machine.  A man is upstairs telling us to work fast and urgently.  It's mostly all a great mystery to the player so far.

 

A screenshot from Black Mirror showing the great manor house where much of the game is played. 

 

In movie news there are three to report.  One is a really terrible SF film from our DVD collection called The Creeping Terror from 1964.  It's a low budget brain killer.  Instead of trying to survive watching the film as delivered, we chose to watch it on MST-3K, with Mike and the bots joking as the film proceeds.  A spaceship crashes and an alien comes out and begins eating people.  The people never run away, and sometimes have to insert themselves into the creature.  It is too ridiculous.  However, the MST episode is very funny and makes even this film quite palatable.

 

From our DVD collection.  Do not watch the original version; instead, watch the MST-3K episode, from Season Six. 

 

Days of Being Wild is a 1990 film by Wong Kar-Wai.  A selfish and spoiled young man uses women until he tires of them and then moves on, often leaving them emotionally scarred.  Though far from being a great film, it does introduce a lot of the director's signature themes, which are developed more maturely in his later films.  The young man is searching for his birth mother (not too diligently) while living with the woman who adopted him.  A local policeman gives the viewer some hope that something decent may yet come from a relationship he had with one of the young man's cast away girlfriends, though the film ends before a true ending is revealed.  Odd and disjointed at times, and the young man is a true piece of turd, so the film isn't that pleasurable to watch.

 

Showing on Criterion. 

 

Misericordia, a French, Portuguese, Spanish film from 2024 is even less fun to watch.  A young man returns to the tiny French village where he grew up to attend the funeral of a man whom he once worked for in the village bakery.  His arrival sparks jealousy in the dead man's son, who wants him to leave right after the funeral.  For no apparent reason the young man stays on, and is then accused by the son of trying to bed his mother.  They have several fights, and in their final one in a remote part of the forest the young man who returned kills the son in a fit of rage.  He buries the body and his worries commence.  The film might have had some credibility without a murder.  But of course there is a murder.  Why?  Can no one make a film without a major crime in it anymore?  The police know he did it but can't prove it.  The local priest knows he did it and helps him cover up the crime, even moving the body from the forest to the church cemetery in the middle of the night.  How this film ever made it to Cannes and Tiff is beyond me.  It's a below average crime film with some not very impressive acting.  The scenery, however, is lush and gorgeous, mid-autumn in the mountains.  The wide screen aspect works well outdoors, but the many indoor shots look quite silly.  Not recommended.

 

Showing on Criterion.  Give it a miss. 

 

I have now put in four intense weeks of practice on the newest piano repertoire.  It sounds like I'm still at the sight reading level.  Progress is grim.  42 hours practice and not really much to show for it.  I can barely play any of the pieces.  It's always so disheartening at the beginning.  In four more weeks I hope to have made at least a dent in the pieces.  The first half features three works by my favourite composer, Bach.  Two Part Invention in D Major will open the program, a fairly dense and very contrapuntal piece, and not as easy as it looks.  That is followed by the Prelude and Fugue in D Major from Book 1 of Bach's Well Tempered Clavier.  The Prelude is a jaunty number that gives the right hand a decent workout, with both hands jumping in for the finale.  The Fugue is a little French Overture, one of the composer's least learned fugues.  It promises to be a fun piece, and shouldn't be too difficult to learn.  We'll see.  All of the Bach is now being played (slowly) hands together, after many hours of hands separate practice.

 

Next comes a sonata by another top favourite composer of mine, Haydn.  It is a miniature piece in three movements, with the first being a theme and variations.  There is nothing too difficult here, and I am hoping it will sound okay in four more weeks.  The second movement is a very short minuet (without trio!), and the third is a rousing finale, a crowd pleaser if there ever was one.  It is the most concentrated and brief version of sonata form I have ever encountered.  I will finish the half with a bagatelle by Beethoven, Op. 119 #1 in g minor.  This is a favourite of mine and I haven't played it in many years.  I have yet to begin this piece.

 

The second half opens with three (more) preludes from Op 11 by Scriabin, #s 4, 5 and 6.  I have yet to begin work on #6, the most difficult one. The first two are slow and the third is madcap fast, in octaves.  Next comes a Chopin nocturne, the most difficult piece on the program.  The Op 27 Nocturnes are among the finest things he ever wrote.  I played #1 years ago and thought I might learn it again, as it is my favourite Chopin piece.  But I decided to give #2 a try.  I can barely play the thing hands separately right now.  This one will require much more time per day than I have been giving it so far.  I likely made a mistake in choosing this one.  Time will tell.

 

I will finish the program with a rousing etude by MacDowell called March Wind.  It's a very effective showpiece, one I have played before.  But I am excited to play it on the grand now!  I'll report back in a month on my progress, if any. 

 

Mapman Mike 

 

 

 

 
 

January Rules the World

The hit count for this blog is currently at 147,059 since its inception on Dec. 20th 2017!  Keep those hits coming and I'll keep writing.  Views come in from virtually every country on the planet.  Now back to our regular programming.

 

January has taken over the Homestead and surrounding area.  It's very cold with worse to come, there is snow on the ground and the boiler is working hard to keep us happy.  We have entered the coldest part of January not only statistically but actually.  This happens from time to time and must be endured, but as we have already had many January days in December it's all getting to be a bit much.  We should have about three weeks of true winter left, but since weather is no longer predictable, this could go on till June.  We shall see.

 

My foot is healing up well.  I will see the doctor in three days to get an official medical opinion, but I am optimistic.  It still hurts to put shoes on, so I am unable to resume walking.  The toe is likely still swollen.  

 

My new piano pieces have now had ten hours of work put into them.  In other words, I am still nowhere.  I will give a more detailed report after the first month.  Deb is inching along on her newest short film, and is ready to commission her composer from Mexico City.  So we both have plenty to keep us busy.  We recently finished playing "Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles," a PC game from 2010.  It is packed with puzzles, many of them quite easy while others are nearly impossible to solve unless one randomly hits upon the solution.  It was actually quite fun to play, even though its relationship to Doyle's book is pretty sketchy.  Graphics were quite well done, as well as the story.

 

 

2 screenshots from the Holmes PC game. 

 

We have begun a replay of Myst III, having recently undertaken the most updated versions of Myst and Riven.  This one badly needs an update.  From 2001 we are now playing the game on Steam rather than loading 4 CDs and having to keep switching them.  At the time, this game was rendered in 640 x 480 graphics!  Hard to believe, as I still think of it as a modern game.

 

2 screenshots from Myst III. 

 

There are two movies to report, and a 9-part SF series.  First the series.  Dark Matter is from 2024 and based on a novel by Blake Crouch.  It stars Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly.  It has an interesting premise that eventually collapses in upon itself, and the series and its many tropes had us cursing the production several times.  Overall it is watchable, especially the episodes where they are traveling within The Box, a room that allows access to different realities, though closely related to the existing one.  It's fun seeing Chicago buried in snow, burnt to a crisp, covered in sand dunes, and looking very sleek and modern in a far future version of itself.  There are many loopholes in the story, and the ending, which we both liked, sure left a heck of a mess behind in present day Chicago.  Recommended, though not highly.

 

Showing on Apple TV. 

 

Two Chinese films round out this portion of today's blog.  It was inevitable that we would watch Chinese Ghost Story 3 from 1991.  Pretty much the same cast returns for pretty much the same story, along with similar scenes of utter grossness, and the familiar farcical humour.  I still recommend the first in the series.

 

Leaving Criterion this month. 

 

Wong Kar Wai has long led in the category of Chinese art film, and his 2004 film 2046 keeps that tradition alive, if not all well.  I found the film overlong and actually on the boring side, despite all the fine photography.  Billed as a romantic drama, that it is.  A man (played by Tony Leung) has many affairs with beautiful women but will not commit to any of them.  Not even the beautiful Gong Li, who comes to love him madly and deeply.  We eventually learn why he is like he is.  There was a woman for him, but she left and seems to have disappeared.  My question is this: can't a person change?  Not this guy, apparently.  The movie is stylish and great to look at, and despite the SF glimmer to the plot the number 2046 refers to a rooming house number, one which he can't seem to leave.  Watchable though not a truly great film (like so many other art films.....).

 

Showing on Criterion. 

 

Coming next: A winter birthday celebration and a 4-film festival of early Nordic noir cinema.  With the weather expected to worsen, the next post should come fairly soon.

 

Mapman Mike 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2025: Looking Back Part 1

It's been a very cold holiday here near the Homestead.  As of today (Jan. 1st) we have had 22 days with the mercury remaining below freezing.  This morning when I went out to feed the birds it was 12 F.  And of course it came with a stiff breeze.  With the holidays winding down (we still have a full moon party to go on Saturday!) it's almost time to return to our normal programming: practicing piano, reading, writing, gaming, studying maps, watching movies and (for Deb) making short films.  Which is pretty much what we did over the holidays, but with more food.  Here is a photo of my 8th or perhaps 9th Christmas morning.  Dig those curtains and that TV!!

 I got some missiles and rockets for Christmas.  It was that era (c. 1961).

2025 was a fairly cruel year for us, with little to no traveling accomplished.  Deb had two surgeries for kidney stones and I injured my foot in June.  The foot is still quite bad, with my walking limited to slow speeds and short duration.  I will see a podiatrist this month, so hoping for some relief.  Regular medical science has been no help, other than telling me that I have an injured foot.  So health problems kept us close to home.

 

Travel was restricted to two journeys to Sudbury by car.  We now break the drive north up into two days and have been exploring a part of Ontario new to us on the way.  We still come home in one go, about 8 hours of solid driving, plus any stops.  As long as Mom is still there to visit these twice yearly trips will likely continue.  Afterwards, who can say.  We also had a short but fun excursion to Toronto, as Deb was invited to a film festival there that was showing one of her films (Once Upon A Time That Never Was).  We went by train, traveling first class, and stayed at a fancy hotel near the station.  We got to have dinner with Amanda and meet her boyfriend, and also got to see Dino (my best man) and Bill, another good friend.  And that sums up 2025 travel news.

 

Turning to major acquisitions for the year, we purchased a 27 CD set of the Rameau operas; I bought new ice skates and used them a lot; we bought a new very fast gaming computer (Acer Nitro 60) and we got a 55" TV.  Of course a lot of Kindle books were purchased, too, but those I talk about in my monthly reading summaries.

 

In other major news two upgrades to our property were completed: a new back deck and a resurfacing of our very long and very old paved driveway.  In music news I played a Spring recital series (Simple Ingredients) and Deb's poster for "Just a Peek" won an award.  She had three films in competition over the year: Once Upon A Time..., Just a Peek and She Makes A Moving Picture.

 

Being home so much made it a great year for PC gaming.  I played a very old game called "Road To India."  Together we played a beautiful Japanese fold out picture book game called "Tengami."  We played a very challenging SF game called "J.U.L.I.A of the Stars."  A big event was the playing of MYST 2024, the latest version of the game.  Though it had some lows, overall it was the best version of the game I have played, with some big improvements to several ages, including the new Arctic one.  Last year the revised version of Riven blew us away, too.

Of course Train Simworld (6) has been a big hit with me.  I am driving trains in real time and real weather, with seasonal changes in England, Scotland, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and the US.  It is such an amazing experience I can't even begin to describe how much this game has been.

Now we come to a true masterpiece of a game, "Everybody's Gone To The Rapture," with music by Jessica Curry.  It's a SF game set in a small English village in 1984, and has to be the most poignant game we have ever played, as well as one of the most beautiful.  The game takes place over one long day, from dawn till dark.  The player explores a vast area indoors and out, trying to figure out what has happened to all of the people, who have mysteriously vanished but left traces of their existence and conversations behind.  The music is as good as the game.  This is a must play game for all gamers.  Brought to you by the people (Chinese Room) that brought us another favourite game, "Dear Esther."

 

I will continue with my look back next time, discussing either best films of the year or best books.  Check back soon.

 

In the meantime there are two recent films to share.  The Color Wheel is from 2011, an American Indie film directed by Alex Ross Perry.  Filmed in b & w and 16 mm, it is billed on Mubi as a very fun road movie comedy.  While there is some driving and even a few funny moments, most of the film is a waste of time and film.  A brother and sister head out on the road to collect her things in a place where she was living with her college professor.  They have broken up.  Along the way they stay in an ultra Christian-run motel, get involved in a scene at the professor's apartment, attend a party held by old high school friends, and head back home, stopping off along the way to talk sister to brother, and to have sex with each other.  A real laugh riot.  I would avoid this one if I were you reading this.

 

Showing on Mubi.
 

 We have a number of films by Wong Kar Wai in the Criterion queue, and so far have watched a very early one (As Tears Go By).  Next came another early one a much later one.  The Grandmaster is ostensible a kung fu film from 2013.  However, this is the true story of Ip Man, one of the greatest exponents of kung fu (and Bruce Lee's first teacher).  Played perfectly by Tony Leung, the film is artistic in look, quiet in tone and beautifully photographed.  The kung fu fights are still way over the top and too long, but quite toned down from the usual wuxia martial arts films that often come out of Hong Kong.  A bit of Chinese history is given out, too, beginning just before the Japanese invasion previous to WW II.  A great looking film, sensibly paced and with costumes and sets to gawk at, as well as great looking male and female leads.  Highly recommended.

 

Now showing on Criterion. 

 

I'll be back soon.

 

Mapman Mike 

 

Holidays

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house not a creature was stirring, except maybe a mouse.  And the house looked like there had been one hell of a party at Solstice.  Yes, it was another memorable fireside holiday here at the Homestead.  Most unusual was that it was clear skies all day and overnight.  So we were up to see dawn break, then sunrise, and 9 hours later a very fine sunset.  The wood lasted till dusk, and the house was very warm all day.  There was food, fine beverages (with a dark ale theme), gummies, music and more.  The music was Act I to Gotterdammerung, which we will conclude as the holiday goes on.  The Prelude and Act I last for 5 1/2 LP sides!  When completed, we will have played all of the finished operas of Wagner.  This might be our fourth time through The Ring.

 

Deb had her last medical appointment of 2025, a record year for such events.  She had an ultrasound on her kidneys to see how many more stones might be taking up residence there.  We will know more next Monday. 

 

In TV news we just finished a highly interesting and well presented 4-part documentary series called The Victorians: Their Story in Pictures.  Presented by Jeremy Paxman, he takes the works of Victorian era painters to give a concise history of the period.  It is from 2009, but we just discovered it recently on one of our streaming channels.  Highly recommended, Paxman pulls no punches in telling it like it was imagined to be and how it really was.

 

Showing on BBC Select in Canada. 

 

In film news, here is the latest.  We have discovered a new Christmas movie favourite.  Christmas, Again is a 2014 film by American Charles Poekel.  Here is Mubi's blurb:

 

Need an antidote to the too-often terrible sub-genre of Christmas movies? Look no further than Charles Poekel’s debut: A gem that ignores the schlocky, capitalist veneer of holiday culture, but rather attends to the emotional and economic nuances brought about by the wintry, consumerist season.

 

A young man who lost recently lost his girlfriend (we are given no details) is back for the 5th year selling live trees for Christmas on a New York City corner.  Most of the film takes place on the corner or within the trailer used for sleep and warming.  We meet his business partners, a male/female pair that take the 12 hour day shift, while he manages the 12 hour night shift.  The film is mostly quiet, sometimes funny but mostly not.  Well acted and surprisingly engaging, I can easily recommend it.

 

Showing on Mubi. 

 

As Tears Go By is an early film (1988) by Wong Kar-Wai.  It tells the story of three gangster brothers who try to survive in a low life part of Kowloon.  Violence, revenge, and macho stupidity dominate the lives of most characters, though the older brother does have redeeming qualities.  His main problem is middle brother, a reckless tear-away.  When a female cousin from the island stays overnight with him to easier access hospital medical tests, his life begins to change.  Despite her good influence, however, he can't seem to break from his past life (middle brother again and again).  The ending seems to echo the message of many noir and crime films: crime doesn't really pay.  The tragic ending is expected.  Not a great film, but impressive enough for a debut feature.  Lots of forgettable pop music included.

 

Now showing on Mubi. 

 

The Last Mile (1932) begins as a hard and heart-rending look at 8 men on death row.  They are housed in separate cells in one room, and can't even see each other, though they do develop relationships between them.  The main character is a rather meek mother's boy who was wrongly convicted of murder and is due to be electrocuted soon.  The second half changes gears completely, as the prisoners, led by a brutish man called "Killer", manage to get hold of a guard's gun and keys.  Though trapped in the cell room, they engage in gunfights with guards.  They get killed off one by one until only the innocent man remains alive.  A stark drama indeed.  From a play by John Wexley.

 

From our vast DVD collection. 

 

Happy Holidays to everyone who reads this!

 

Mapman Mike 

 

 

The Bleak Midwinter

It's cold enough for winter, but at least it's sunny and virtually snowless out there, beyond the coziness of Lone Mountain Homestead.  We have very few plans for the holidays, other than the usual: reading, practicing piano (one of us; the other one is making an animated film), watching films, hoping for clear nights with usable temperatures, and doing some gaming.  The exception is this Friday, when we will visit Detroit.  There is a fun film event at the DIA that day that we would like to attend.

 

In local news we enjoyed, as usual, our Winter Solstice party for two.  This is our longest event of the year, and it runs from about 7:30 am until around 10 pm.  This year we not only saw the sunrise (it is reborn!) but also the sunset.  That is a rare happening here at this cloudy time of year. 

Solstice sunrise, looking southeast from our rear picture window.  The sun rises here at 7:58, but we didn't see it until almost 15 minutes later.    

 

At sunrise we first noticed it on the top of our tallest tree, a white pine we planted many years ago.  The pine cones sparkled with a golden hue as if they were lights on the tree.  We had put up our indoor decorations the night before.  Besides an all-day wood fire in our living room fireplace there was good food and drink aplenty.  And there was Wagner.  This year we chose the next opera on our to-do list.  Wagner only wrote one comic opera, the same one that is his only opera with no supernatural elements to the story.  Die Mastersinger von Nurnberg also happens to be his longest opera, and the only one of which we have no recording on the premises.  Spotify to the rescue!  We were able to listen to all 4 CDS by playing it on the computer, with blue tooth relaying the sound to our stereo speaker system.  It took us most of the day to get through its 4 1/2 hours.  It is a very funny opera, and great fun to listen to.  Deb had downloaded a pdf English translation and we were able to follow along.  The opera has much to say about music and, of course, a united Germany and its old traditions.

This is the version we listened to, courtesy of Spotify.  We have a free account. 

 

I mentioned gaming a ways back.  We began our 11 days of gaming with two games of Carcassonne.  First game just a regular game, which Deb won handily.  Then we played adding the Robbers to the scenario.  I won, just.  We will need to play the playoff game soon.  Today (Sunday) we will play Middle Earth: The Wizards collectible card game, also part of a series.  We also made some progress on Tengami, our current PC game.  And I am nearly finished with Road To India, a mystery adventure game.  A problem arose where the game crashed just at the end of a movie, as the next section tried to load.  I finally had to download a saved game file so that I could restart my play once the game had loaded properly.  But they worked fine, and I should, hopefully, be able to complete the game.

 

Late on Solstice morning, with its long shadows.  Note the tiny bit of snow!

My Solstice beverage of choice, collected on our autumn road trip. 

 

The Detroit River was busy with ships today. 

 

Our wood fire, kept going today from 8:30 am until about 5:30 pm.  

We sat here and listened to opera.

 

Solstice susnet, 2024.

Solstice sunset with passing ship, one of five ships that I watch year round.

The Federal Bering had been in Detroit.  This is a salty, and during the year it travels to Europe, the Mediterranean, and South America.  Good by Bering until next year.
  

On the subject of opera for a few moments longer, we got to see Maria, a 2024 film starring Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas, the Greek opera singing sensation.  Somehow Mubi got hold of it, even before it is being released worldwide.  We get to see the final week of Callas's life, her downward trend accelerated by drug addiction and depression.  She was also addicted to being admired, and needed to be noticed wherever she went.  Through flashbacks we get to see other key moments in her life.  She began singing in childhood, and was traumatized by the abuse of soldiers who not only used her for sex, but made her sing first.  While her older sister was able to "close the door" on this sad episode of their lives, Maria was never able to.  Her affair with Onassis is given a lot of coverage, as well as her attempt to return to the stage.  Having lost a lot of weight quickly in later life, it likely affected her ability to sing.  Jolie does some of the singing herself, though the greatest moments are lip synced with Callas performing.  She is capable in the role, though she is unable to garner much sympathy from viewers for her character.  Callas was not really a very nice person.  At least today we can still enjoy her many recordings, including some done in her prime.  Recommended for music fans, but not for Tomb Raider fans, unless they love opera.

Now showing on Mubi.

We also watched My Blueberry Nights, a romantic comedy from 2007.  Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai made his first English film about two people who meet, then separate for a year, and then get back together.  He runs a small cafe in New York, while she has just learned that her boyfriend has dumped her for another girl.  She goes often to the cafe (pie and ice cream) and they talk.  She feels that she has to leave, and heads to Memphis, then out west and on to Nevada, before finally returning to the cafe in the final scene.  She writes him letters, but never leaves an address, so he is unable to find her.  Her adventures on the road as a waitress in different locations make up the bulk of the movie.  Highly recommended, with good writing and acting.

Leaving Mubi soon. 

 

Mapman Mike

 

 

 

 

 

 

Syberia 3

Ever wonder where those jets are coming from or going to, the ones you see pass overhead?  We are often on the arrival and departure path of many flights out of Detroit airport.  Well, now it's easy to find out using a website called flightradar24.  The free version is okay, but the silver version (cost $10 per year) is so much better.  Flights to Amsterdam (3x daily), London (2x daily), Paris (2x daily), and Frankfurt (1-2x daily) all seem to fly right over our house on departure.  The flights to Asia head the opposite direction, so we don't see those.  And of course any amount of flights to Mexico, the Caribbean, Canada, and all points US often fly over, too.  I just watched the plane to Amsterdam fly over, and as I type I am awaiting the giant Lufthansa plane on its way to Frankfurt.  From the moment when it begins to taxi (yup, you can watch that, too) till it arrives over our house is around 4 minutes time.  A fun hobby.  Typically, around 13-14 thousand planes are in the air at any given time, world wide.  That is a lot of jet fuel being burned at any one time.

Syberia 3 is finally complete.  Deb gave up on it about halfway through, but I managed to finish it.  The worst part of the game, well, there are several big problems, has to be the limited view the player has of his surroundings.  It's impossible to look all around without moving the character, and often that is a clumsy process, for example when in a room.  And sometimes Kate Walker will get stuck in a loop, and keep marching on the spot.  In outdoor environments it is hard to figure out one's surroundings because of the limited viewpoint.  If you do make a wrong turn, the game could begin one of its many very long loads for the new environment.  then you have to reload the old environment just to get back where you were.  And there are serious bugs, and the only solution offered is to download a saved game and jump to that spot.  It is a really long game, much of it due to the loading time for adjacent environments.  Add to that that the story is simplistic and not at all engaging, and the ending is terrible, and there is very little reason not to replay Syberia 1 instead of this game.  The final puzzle (image, below) is also quite silly, and once solved you have to sit through a long concluding movie.  And did I mention that you cannot save a game, but must wait for the engine itself to save at its appointed time?  This makes the final complex puzzle nearly impossible to solve without putting aside an entire evening.  If you stop anywhere, you have to restart the entire thing.  There are some lovely environments, but also too many dark, dreary, and dingy ones.

 The final puzzle, shown part way through.

Anyway, the game is complete, and I have moved on to a game called Nibiru.  Hoping this one has some good qualities to it. 

Deb has had her 2nd laser surgery today, and is resting comfortably in her big chair.  A few days to recover, and one more session in February, and hopefully her pain and discomfort will be fully alleviated.  She also had her RA infusion earlier in the week.  Luckily our weather has been calm.  No snow is in the forecast, thus it will be a brown Solstice and Christmas.  We are both fine with that.  Makes driving much less stressful.  And we are in for a mild spell.  Mid 40s predicted for Solstice on Sunday, making it one of the warmest ones ever.  We will likely turn down the furnace that day, as we will have our all-day fire.  We've seen a lot of sunsets lately, too, more than usual for this time of year.  The Sun is basically at its most southerly right now, and by Monday or Tuesday will slowly begin its journey northwards.  I might even enjoy a clear night tomorrow!

Finally, in movie news, my choice of films this week was the 2nd part of Chungking Express, which the director wanted to be part of one long movie.  Instead, he was persuaded to make a 2nd film, which also has two weird stories.  Whereas the first movie showed Hong Kong in daytime, and sunny, Fallen Angels shows the city at night, and during the rainy season.  The 2nd film is darker in many ways, and much more violent.  Both films have a kind of unfinished feel to them, with endings that can hardly be called satisfying.  Still, the movies are easy to watch, and the characters so bizarre that trying to figure out what is really going on is nearly pointless.  Sit back and watch, and hopefully enjoy.

Here is a quote from the director about the two films, which I borrowed from Wikipedia:

...To me, Chungking Express and Fallen Angels are one film that should be three hours long. I always think these two films should be seen together as a double bill. In fact, people asked me during an interview for Chungking Express: "You've made these two stories which have no relationship at all to each other, how can you connect them?" And I said, 'The main characters of Chungking Express are not Faye Wong or Takeshi Kaneshiro, but the city itself, the night and day of Hong Kong. Chungking Express and Fallen Angels together are the bright and dark of Hong Kong." I see the films as inter-reversible, the character of Faye Wong could be the character of Takeshi in Fallen Angels; Brigitte Lin in Chungking could be Leon Lai in Fallen Angels. All of their characters are inter-reversible. Also, in Chungking we were shooting from a very long distance with long lenses, but the characters seem close to us.  

 Now showing on Criterion Channel, along with Chungking Express. 

Happy Solstice to one and all!  Enjoy the dark days as much as possible, and have no fear, despite Trump and Brexit, the light will return, eventually.....

Mapman Mike