Watching old, old movies part 12

I'm going through this list, and here are my previous entries.

34. The City of the Dead (1960)
I really enjoyed this movie. It was more of a thriller than a horror movie, featuring a very young Christopher Lee (young to the point where it took me half the movie before I recognised him). The movie opens on a village in New England in 1692 where a witch is about to be burned at the stake, as that happens she curses the village and everyone in it. Fast-forward to modern day and we're at college where history professor Alan Driscoll is giving a lecture on historic witchcraft in New England. One of the students wishes to make her final paper something special and tells her professor that she'd like to go stay in an old, rural New England village and dig through the history of the place. The professor sends her to Whitewood, where he says he knows some people, and from there the young woman gets entangled in real-life witchcraft. The movie was chilling and thrilling, and really holds up to today. Except of course the weird close-ups of staring faces that happened several times in the movie. I think they were supposed to be chilling, but they came off as ridiculous. All in all, one of my favourites on the list so far.

35. Mill of the Stone Women (1960)
Original title: Il mulino delle donne di pietra. To someone who finds dubbing to be jarring, Italian movies from this period are very hard to watch. This is because they used international actors, allowing them to speak the lines in their own languages while filming, and then recorded the sound elsewhere and just put it over the film. The Italian movies I've watched so far have had two versions: one with English sound and one with Italian sound. La maschera del demonio (Black Sunday) was good enough that it almost didn't matter, but this movie was jarring from end to finish. The plot was weak and the voice acting was absolutely terrible. I dislike the whole notion of "I met you two seconds ago but I love you and I want to marry you and spend my whole life with you" and the first half of this movie centers around that idea. In the second half it abruptly turns into a game of resurrection and murder and conquering death. It's like it made a complete turnaround from a silly romantic drama to a paranormal murder-mystery. The storytelling was janky and disjointed and I feel like they could've gone two different directions with the story, but chose the one that made the least sense. Turning it into a straight-up haunted house movie probably would've been better than the mess this is.

36. Dead of Night (1945)

When I started watching this movie I really wasn't sure at first, but it turned into one of the best films on this list. It starts with a man arriving at an old farm house where a bunch of people are having tea. The man is an architect who's been called down to a friend of a friend to do a reconstruction job over the weekend. The other people are old friends. The architect arrives and is immediately frazzled and when he explains that he's having a major case of déjà vu despite never having been there or seen these people before, but everything that's happening is part of a recurring nightmare that he's been having, the whole group starts to offer up their own tales of the supernatural. The first story "The Hearse Driver" didn't do anything for me. The second one "Christmas Story" was a classic tale of a girl who stumbles upon a ghost of a boy in an old house. Creepy, but predictable. The third story was "The Haunted Mirror", which was also a classic tale of a haunted object affecting the person using it. It was a classic, but this story is when my interest was piqued. Unfortunately, the fourth one "Golfing Story" was pretty dumb and my interest was lost and I started scrolling through my phone and only listening to the movie. Then came the last story called "The Ventriloquist's Dummy". Anyone who knows me knows that dolls creep me out, especially those kinds of dummies. So to me this story was creepy from the get-go. It turned into a classic tale of a possessed doll compelling a person to do its bidding. I know how these stories usually go, but this one had a very simple but also very elegant twist at the end that I really enjoyed. That last story was absolutely the highlight of the movie. After all of the stories are told, the scenario unfolds exactly like the architect's dream predicted, and although the sudden change of pace in the movie's storytelling at first seems kind of jarring, the end of the movie offers a completely unexpected twist (for my part) and I really enjoyed seeing the whole thing unfold. Definitely one of the most enjoyable movies on the list. 

The Umbrella Academy season 2

Can we all agree that Five is the best? Good. 

Moving on to the spoilers.

We both loved the first season, so when the second season dropped we were both really keen to get started on it. As much as we liked the show and the characters the plot this season seemed weaker. We both figured out pretty early that Vanya would be the catalyst again. The apocalypse didn't follow them. Vanya is the apocalypse no matter where and when she goes.

I really appreciated Klaus this season and seeing him trying to come to terms with his lovelife and the heartbreak that followed meeting his boyfriend and having him not know Klaus because they haven't met yet from his perspective. 

That ending promises a really interesting third season.

Ten years since Japan

It's been 10½ years since I was in Japan and I somehow can't believe it. I really believed that I'd find my way back there before a decade had passed. But life got in the way and here we are ten years later and I've been nowhere near Asia in that time. 

Going to Japan was my big coming-of-age adventure. I was 19 years old and I left for Tokyo in the last days of February 2010. 

The first day of March was my first day of class and the first half of March was spent just getting the hang of things and getting to know the classmates and going on adventures with them. I still remember the first morning I squeezed myself onto one of the metro trains in rush hour traffic. I've never experienced another rush hour like the one in Tokyo anywhere ever again. The sheer amount of people was daunting, almost terrifying, but unlike other places there was as little pushing and discomfort as possible because people subconsciously knew how to take up as little room as possible and how to stay out of each other's way as much as possible. The Tokyo rush hour is a great machinery working very smoothly. No other country can compare. 

March was when we went on several afternoon adventures and weekend day-trips. I especially remember when we took a trip to Kawagoe. It was also when two of us went on a weekend trip to Kyoto via Shinkansen. And it was the time for hanami. So much hanami. 

April was the time of Tokyo Tower, Odaiba, FujiQ and Disneyland. There was always something going on. Somewhere to go, something to see. Food to experience. Karaoke and purikura and Sweets Paradise and melon soda. 

I started off May in Seoul. During Japan's Golden Week when we had time off school I took a little sidetrip to Seoul, just three days. I figured that Korea and Japan would be similar enough. Kind of like Sweden and Germany or something like that. But Korea was like a whole 'nother world. I took the time to visit an aquarium, some historical sights, and I also took a trip up to Namsan, the mountain close-by the city.

May and June was when the activity tapered out. We still did things together, but it was less sightseeing and more hanging out in familiar spots. One highlight of May was the wedding of our host family's daughter. And I also really loved the exploration of Meiji Jingu Shrine that I did on my own one weekend, which coincided with the first time I dared to traverese the shockingly crowded Takeshita Doori on my own. 

I was only in Japan for two weeks of June. June was mostly a lot of dinners with friends I had made during my almost four months in Tokyo. But it was also the month when we discovered Shakey's pizza and had a great laugh about it. 

For months after I returned to Sweden I missed Japan. I would dream about Tokyo every night and the stillness of my hometown was seemingly driving me insane. Imagine going from one of the biggest bustling cities in the world to living on the edge of a village with farmland across the road? The silence was deafening, the stillness crushing. Going back to uni definitely helped me adjust back to life in smalltown Sweden, but I've never stopped missing Japan. Which is why this guy is great:

Game completed: Shadowrun: Hong Kong

What a game :D I've now played through all three of the Shadowrun games by Harebrained Schemes and I really need another one. I played Dragonfall in 2017 and Returns in 2014.

Just like in the last two games I made an elf street samurai and got going. I really enjoyed the story in this game too, but it wasn't as amazing as Dragonfall. 

From the get-go it was obvious that the big baddy would be in the Walled City, and I kind of dislike that the whole main story thing didn't connect to it more. Until the very end the main story going on with the characters and whatever was happening in the Walled City seemed like two separate things, where the events in the Walled City kind of ended up in the periphery while I was off searching for my foster dad and trying to bring down a big corporation. 

The post-campaign campaign had better connectivity, but it was too damn short. 

Just like I fell in love with Glory in Dragonfall I got strangely attached to Racter in this game. Which should probably worry me since he is a diagnosed psychopath who wants to bring about a world with nothing but mega cyber enhanced psychopaths. He just really grew on me. And the way he sees the world is a pretty fresh perspective. At least to me. 

The main story starts out with you just getting out of max prison and getting a call from your foster father to meet up in Hong Kong. There you meet your foster brother Duncan and shit hits the fan. Your father is seemingly dead and both you and your brother need to have your identities erased to avoid the police. As the story progresses you find out that your father was involved in some pretty bad things in the past that are still affecting the huge slum called the Walled City to this day. To find out what happened to him you need to dig up the past and find the people responsible and along the way right the wrongs in the Walled City.

As much as I liked this game I just wish there was more to it. I wanted more sidejobs, more sidequests. I would've loved sidejobs involving the Ka Fai family. 

Yeah my name is a good one! :D

Coronavirus!!!! :o

Lucifer

 I really enjoy this show. I suggested we watch it as our next dinner time show and Toni consented. He wasn't as into it as I was and thought it was a little bit girly, but I really like it. And not just because Tom Ellis is mmm. I love how they play with the mythology. I love how much of a bumbling idiot the Devil is. I found the show to be intriguing and interesting and exciting at times. Although it did get frustrating that it took soooooooo long for Chloe to find out the truth. Four seasons? Come on! 

Just like with most shows the first three seasons are the best and then it starts going downhill. The show could've ended after the fourth season, although that ending would've been heartbreaking. I'm really, really curious to see where the second half of the fifth season takes us and what kind of series end they come up with for the sixth season.

Season 1 trailer:

My last 5 books: All about fantasy

1. Artemis Fowl, by Eoin Colfer. Amazingly I have never read Artemis Fowl before. I strongly suspect that I would have absolutely loved everything about this book had I been 15 years younger. As it is now, I liked it, even really enjoyed it at times. I love plot-heavy intrigues that seem to be completely separate parts of the puzzle and then to watch them come together at the end is just magical. This book does just that. If only Artemis was five years older, the text wouldn't seem so childish and simple. The plot is actually fairly complicated but the text is simplistic. The best part about this story is Holly Short and I hope she'll be involved in every single sequel story. I will be getting the other books about Artemis. I enjoyed this one too much not to.


2. Moon Over Soho, by Ben Aaronovitch. It's been years and years since I read the first book in this series and I'm not sure why I didn't immediately pick up the second because I remember liking the first book and the extensive amount of Harry Potter related jokes in it. Sequels are always hard and this one was alright, but had to do a lot more about jazz than anything else and my jazz knowledge is thin to put it mildly. There were still Harry Potter and Doctor Who jokes in it, both of which I highly appreciated, but more than anything this book was about the London jazz scene. Unfortunately, it suffered from being blatantly obvious. Halfway through the book I had figured out who the accidental murderer was and it was just a matter of waiting for the characters to catch up. Which they did in the second to last chapter, hallelujah. That said, the waiting wasn't too bad because the book is written in a humorous way that makes even waiting for the penny to drop for the characters somewhat fun. This book also introduced who I think will be the main antagonist throughout the series and I'm curious to find out what he'll do next, because accidental vampires and absolutely intentional chimerae seem to be just the beginning. Detective stories and crime novels are rarely my cup of tea, but I will continue reading this series. Mainly because I really like the main character and his antics.

3. A Little Hatred, by Joe Abercrombie. Omg, yeeees! I was excited for this book because it was the continuation of the story from The First Law trilogy and I'm so here for anything Abercrombie writes. Two pages in of this novel and all I could feel was "omg I've missed his writing so much". This book is perfection. Every bit of it that I read, I loved. Unlike even The First Law and especially Heroes that all had some tedious bits, A Little Hatred was so perfectly balanced between action and intrigue as to never be boring. So A Little Hatred takes place ca 30 years after The First Law and a lot has changed, but surprisingly much has stayed the same, especially in the North. While The First Law is firmly set in the medieval knights and magic setting, A Little Hatred has moved the story away from the magic and into an industrial revolution, with all the coal, smoke and pollution that entails. The only magic actually in this book is Rikke's seering (and perhaps, possibly, something at the end that only Bayaz knows about, but it's so very suspicious). Unsurprisingly, as Glokta was my favourite character in The First Law, Savine dan Glokta, his daughter, became my favourite character of this story. Rikke also became a favourite after she grew up a bit and stopped being so damn sheltered. Abercrombie writes women exceedingly well and a lot of the time the women show up as strong and resilient, who know what they want and they know what to do to get it even if it's by silently watching from a distance and waiting for their moment. In comparison all of the men come across as wheedling, whiny babies. Except for the magnificently clever Eminence of Sand dan Glokta ♥ Nobody builds your subconscious emotions like Abercrombie. Bayaz is a monster, a terrifying beast, as shown in The First Law, and yet I did not expect to actually feel afraid when he showed up in Adua, the same way the characters from the previous trilogy did. But I did, and I can't wait to read The Trouble With Peace.

4. The Language of Thorns, by Leigh Bardugo. I went in expecting nothing from this short story anthology (a.k.a fairytale collection) and came away have really, thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it. But then again I do have a soft spot for fables and fairytales, especially the dark, old ones that Disney haven't touched yet. This anthology contains six stories and I enjoyed every single one except The Too-Clever Fox and Little Knife. Especially The Witch of Duva and When Water Sang Fire hold special places in my heart. The Witch of Duva is a spin on Hansel & Gretel, and When Water Sang Fire is a spin on The Little Mermaid. The majority of these stories have the same lesson: you are your own maker, and I'm absolutely loving it. The illustrations in this book were so beautiful and gave an extra layer to the stories. I especially love the final illustration for The Witch of Duva and When Water Sang Fire, but having the side illustrations to look/glance at while reading The Soldier Prince and When Water Sang Fire definitely added a bit of extra oomph to the storytelling. I want more.

5. Queen of Ruin, by Tracy Banghart. Oh. My. God. This was amazing. The first book had a weak start and a promising end. This second book had all the character growth, all the plot development and all the twists. I loved it from start to finish. Every hardship the women endured on Mount Ruin literally made me feel my heart drop at every turn. Every tentative sweet moment between Nomi and Malachi had me smile. When Nomi discovered her parents' fate I cried. This book gave me all the feels. Maybe the ending came about a little too easy, but honestly after 300 pages of hardships at every turn I really don't mind an easy conclusion. Was it easy, though? Like a hundred women died throughout this book fighting for their right to choose. What this book does throughout, and it does it well, is to show that women can. And they can just as well as men. Maybe even better because the men seem constantly surprised over the fact. Girl power to the max! I love it. I need a follow-up series, please.

Game completed: ELEX

This game was on so many Youtube game trailer channels back in 2016 and it was constantly on my radar before release because it seemed so cool. Then it released in 2017 and promptly disappeared. I rediscovered it on Steam last year and bought it during this year's summer sale.

The game has a post-apocalyptic setting with both sci-fi and fantasy elements working hand in hand and all of it has come from the mineral/substance called Elex that arrived with the comet that annihilated the old world. The current world is divided into four factions;

• the Berserkers live without technology and are set on regrowing the world with the help of World Hearts that they cultivate and which in return give them Mana - a form of Elex that supplies the Berserkers with magic;
• the Outlaws are a faction which only cares about profit and to get it they collect scrap, they are a wild and selfish bunch that follow no laws and live for freedom, but are also hooked up on chems;
• the Clerics follow the teachings of their deity Calaan and his prophet Arvid, they live for the accumulation of knowledge about everything and anything and they use Elex to power their technology;
• the Albs consume Elex in its natural form and they are all dependent on it, the Elex gives them power and strength and they strive to reach the next stage of evolution through consumption of Elex, unfortunately the most prevalent side effect of Elex consumption is to be stripped of emotion, and any Alb who chooses to leave the faction will have to deal with the turmoil of getting their emotions back - a lot of them end up killing themselves because they can't handle the realisation of what they did when they had no emotions, all Albs live as a sort of hive-mind serving the Hybrid who functions as their deity while the Albs themselves deny any religious tendencies. 
  
  

The player character is Commander Jax, a high-ranking Alb who is sent on a solo mission in the beginning of the game only to have his aircraft shot down and being almost executed by his brother Kallax. Surviving the execution attempt and the crash Jax then finds himself on a personal quest of vengeance and maneouvering the world of emotions. With Elex gone from his system all the power and strength he had as an Alb commander is gone and he has to work himself up from the bottom again to be able to fulfill his quest and get his revenge. To get back his strength he moves through the three factions of the Free People (Berserkers, Outlaws and Clerics) eventually joining one of them. 

The story as the game begins is that the Free People are warring amongst themselves while also fighting a losing war against the Albs. The Albs are on a mission to gather Elex for the Hybrid (All Elex to the Hybrid!) and to do this they have placed several Converters in the world. The Converters mine Elex from the ground, but they are also places to where Albs bring people to have the Elex wrought out of them, turning them into mindless husks dependent on Elex in the process (or simply killing them). Jax can choose to not care about the warring between the factions or he can choose, as an Outsider, to work to bring them together. The best example of this is the situation in The Domed City. 

Gameplay wise this game has a pretty steep learning curve in the beginning. The best tips I found online to help with this is to 1). Turn off targeting because it will get you killed and 2). Turn off the battle prompts like Evade. The game doesn't tell you how to apply learning points a.k.a skill points. Each time you level up you get 10 attribute points to put into Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Cunning, and you also get 1 learning point. To be able to apply a learning point you first need to find the right trainer and when you do make sure you have enough Elexit (currency) to pay them and that you also have enough points into whatever attributes this skill demands. It's a lot to keep track of and for the first 3-5 levels I couldn't apply any learning points. Luckily the levels come pretty quickly even in the later stages of the game.

Everything hurts in the beginning and I did a lot more running away from monsters than fighting monsters, but it's incredibly satisfying to come back to that area at a later stage and completely decimate all the monsters there. In the early stages I only did sidequests in and around Goliet (the starting city) because the big wide world seemed so scary and daunting, considering that the small Critters outside the city gates hurt so badly. 

The lore is amazing. I went on the side quest to find out the truth behind Calaan's prophet Arvid's teachings and what I found was so unexpected and cool. Same thing for the main quest to find out the Hybrid's origins. And Caja's companion quest... There are so many things adding to the lore and every little thing you discover just builds up the world and how it works. And exploring is so worth it because there are so many amazing places to uncover - but I recommend doing it past level 20 when you start to be able to hold your own against most monsters. 

There are seven companions to unlock and gather in the game and it made me weirdly happy to have a gang again. I've missed having a gang ever since I played Dragon Age. Most amazingly this game incorporates the companion into any dialogue you're having and they react to what you say. The game will tell you if a companion approves of what you say and how much they like you. The two female companions, Caja and Nasty, are also available for romance if you can get their approval high enough. I kissed Caja mihihihi My favourite companion quickly became Falk and he's the main reason that I joined the Clerics (although the badass looking armour didn't hurt).

All in all I enjoyed this game way more than I thought I would and I almost didn't want to continue playing when I realised I only had the main quest left because I didn't want it to end. But end it did and now I can't wait for Elex 2 (which is actually in development), because the reveal at the end of Elex promises a very interesting story for any sequel. 

New World preview

I got excited about this game after the cinematic trailer that was so cool. This is a MMO developed by Amazon and it looked so promising. Then I saw an early gameplay trailer that looked dubious. Nevertheless I signed up for the beta and got nothing. Then I got an invite to the preview and resolved to play it as much as possible to get a feel for the game and find out whether it would be worth it or not.

To start with the character creation was ridiculous. You could basically choose between ten faces and then change between about the same amount of hairstyles and hair colours. No sliders or anything to make your character the way you like, which had the effect that every character looked the same.

The environments were amazingly beautiful. Everything looked stunning. I never got to take part in the spawning world events because they started at lvl 25 and I think I only got to lvl 21 before the preview ended. I once entered one of them like "oh what's this?" and was promptly two-shotted by the boss. So that was fun xD After that it became a matter of "nope, nope, nope, runnnning!" whenever one of them started to spawn in on a location I was at.

The combat took some getting used to. It was pretty hack n slash but without the combos. Iirc they wanted to make the combat seem like it was pretty authentic 17th/18th century which also meant no numbered abilities like there usually are in a MMO. By the time the preview ended I had it pretty figured out, but it didn't work very well if you had more than one enemy on you at once. There were a few swishing AoE attacks that could damage more than one enemy at a time, but the cooldown was too damn long.

All of the quests were go here, kill this many, loot this many, and return. Which is pretty common for MMOs and a lot of RPGs in general, but they're usually built on and buried in story/lore so that it doesn't feel like that's what you're doing. This game literally had every single objective be Go to this place. Kill this many. Loot this many of this item. Return. It got tired real fast and was very repetitive.

I put 12½ hours into the preview and even now I'm still not sure whether this is a game I'd like to buy. It looks beautiful and I could imagine playing it when I don't have anything better to do, but there are so many other things I could play that I find it hard to believe that I'd put much time into it the way it is now.

Some of the discussion in the main chat also said that the game was mostly geared towards PvP (which I'm not a fan of) and not so much PvE, which was pretty obvious. And they also discussed that a PvP build would literally put all the points into CON, because the bonuses from STR and DEX were too slim/minimal to have any effect on an opponent that had put all of their points into CON. Which means basically no room for experimenting. In general this game seems to have little room for individuality.

I'd like to give it another chance or two after they've had some time to improve upon the game and I'm happy to see they're pushing the release again because the way it is now, there's no way this game will be a hit. I hope that changes because the cinematic trailer still gives me all the right feels.