What's this all about?

I'm a guy with way too many interests and way too much time on my hands. A while back I realized that I spend a lot of my time just telling people I know about the various media I consume, so I just figured what the hell, let's just lay it all out. On here, you'll see my reviews of video games, films, books, tv shows, and more, but I've also decided to upload my hobbies here as well because why not?

John Carpenter's The Thing: A Long Awaited First Viewing

-
To be perfectly honest, few popular culture things make me nearly as embarrassed as the fact that until recently I had never seen the 1982 version of The Thing, starring Kurt Russell. Adding insult to injury was the fact that I am a big movie buff, and Lovecraftian stories were always a great love of mine. Even all these years later, I think it remains one of the greatest horror films of all time, and continues to blow even modern practical effects out of the water.

The story may be subjective, but the impact it left on  viewers certainly isn't. You could fill an art gallery with people's custom The Thing posters.

By now probably everyone and their mother knows the general plot of The Thing, but in a nutshell it is Invasion of the Body Snatchers, except with a physical alien being/virus and taking place in a remote arctic research station. The story of isolation and infiltration isn't a very common one today, but what makes the way the story told exceptional is the large amount of subjectivity and ambiguity in the narrative. There isn't really a main character this story, further increasing the feeling of mystery, but the closest thing we have is the rough-and-tumble MacReady. There are plenty of iconic scenes and moments in this film, and first-time viewers like myself will probably know ahead of time how some events go down, but still, there's a lot of surprise to be found here.

Despite lacking the traditional tools and situation of an action hero, Kurt Russell carries the same energy with him in this film

The technicals do so much to execute this concept of mystery as well, and truly both sides are performing above and beyond the norm (especially in a horror movie of all things). There's a good deal of long wandering shots that make you wonder what's going on, things moving out of frame, and such. Really, there's a lot of show, but whether anything is told isn't very clear if that makes any sense. There is also a lot of natural light in this film (more that the amount of light makes sense for the location and the sources), with the result being a decently dim film. For that I would recommend watching this in the evening/night to avoid glare. The practical effects are still essentially top of their class, and none are more impressive as the titular Thing (or should it be Things?). The Thing(s) are truly grisly, corrupted, and almost indescribable in their wretchedness, but they are incredible creations.

Even though I knew it was coming, one of the few times we actually witness the infecting of a person is haunting thanks to amazing acting and practical effects. Top notch.

Really, if by chance you're like me and haven't watched this masterpiece yet, I strongly advise that you do. A great example of a film that never ages, it's a grisly beauty to behold (those with weak constitutions should consider having a bucket nearby for safety's sake), and is currently on Netflix for the time being. There's also a 2011 prequel (which is essentially the same film with more CGI and Cristopher Hivju) and surprisingly the 1951 original, both of which might be with looking into, though the 2011 one is supposed to be not good I hear. Maybe a good intro horror movie too, for besides the gross-out factor, I doubt that it would scare anyone away from anything, except maybe very calm and silent huskies...

Ah, an isolated Arctic research station, a place I'd love to live at for a bit, though after this I'm not so sure...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

[Demo] Spark in the Dark

-
  Spark in the Dark is a dungeon-crawling action RPG made by the first-time game dev team of Stellar Fish, and recently as part of the Steam Next Fest a demo was made available. What had been showcased prior had caught my attention because of its visual similarities to Exanima , a favorite of mine, but the games are really not at all similar. The demo was quite promising, though there is still a great deal of room for improvement. The demo covers the first level of the rogue-like adventure, where after choosing a class (essentially a playstyle), the game plops you in the entry room of the dungeon. The four classes (Warrior, Hunter, Rogue, and Blacksmith) offer dramatically different playstyles that go beyond simple weapon/armor choices. The map is the same on each run, with the same item and enemy placement. From this, the presence of containers and their status is randomized, as are traps. In some runs there are hardly any, and others a secret passage is littered with the things, whi
Read more

The Evil Eye

-
Image
The Evil Eye is an adventure in the Ravenloft setting for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition (which came out at least five years before I was born, good lord), and while I currently have no plans to run it in either 2e or 5e, I can definitely see a lot of potential for this adventure. Due to 5e producing campaigns labelled as adventures and 2e producing campaign guides and standalone adventures separately, it's important to describe what to expect with this book. After reading through it all the way once and returning to earlier sections, I'd say that this adventure is best run as a standalone short campaign. It was originally designed for levels 4-6 in 2e, but I'd say that with some tweaks for difficulty it could be made to work for a 1-5 campaign for 5e without much trouble. Now it's time to break down this campaign and talk about its components, for some reason described internally as six different scenarios, even though they are far better as a whole. Tangen
Read more

Blackstone Fortress: Ascension

-
    I had gotten this book on a whim when I was in Books a Million while I was in Indiana for a wedding in mid-November, largely because I had earlier bought the boardgame Blackstone Fortress . I could go on about the story of why I bought the Blackstone Fortress boardgame, but it would take far too long and would not add anything besides making me seem very silly, so I will not. While I was flying up to Canada I finished the book, and while on the whole I enjoyed it, the book's conclusion left something to be desired.      To give some broad background, Blackstone Fortress: Ascension is the concluding chapter in a duology (I had no idea that this was the case when I bought it, silly me) that along with a collection of short stories forms a sort of novelization trilogy of the boardgame of the same name. In the boardgame, you and a number of other players play as intrepid explorers/treasure hunters/fanatics in the 41st millennium trying to get to the innermost depths of a space st
Read more