Yes, it has been an exceptionally long time since I’ve posted. Perhaps one day I will get into the details on why, but it’s a long and painful story that I’ll probably just leave untold. I have decided to start writting again for an irregular series of Great and Nearly Great Films.

I’ve gotten to the point in my life where I don’t follow film much any more, most of what I see I’m not a huge fan of, or completely forget about in a couple weeks. But there are so many movies that I watch now that I’ve seen dozens of times, and can watch pretty close to once a month for a year straight.

I’d like to go over and examine them in more detail and try to point out what I think makes them Great Films. Nearly Great Films I’d like to consider as well: movies I watch all the time but don’t quite enjoy as much, or realize their flaws but watch anyways. This could also include films that I haven’t seen as much but continue to return to with curiosity with somewhat of a regularity. There will be restrictions for what films fall into which category.

Great Films must be movies that I’ve seen at least 6 times, and are at least 4 years old. I figure that with the viewing limit I can prevent myself from improperly categorizing films that I’m still new to. The age restriction is just to make sure that I don’t categorize something that I enjoy due to it’s contemporary nature more than its quality.

Nearly Great Films I must have seen at least twice (though, this won’t be an issue due to some upcoming requirements) and can be of any age. I imagine that I’ll use this for many purposes: new films that may wane with age, an otherwise outstanding director’s less than fantastic outings, campy films that have a certain flare,  or good films that have a critical flaw.

Now, in order to do this right I’ll watch the film again before I go over it. Hopefully I’ll track down original art, and also be able to take screen caps. The screen caps may not be available for everything if I only have the film on blu-ray or if my capture’s just being a pain in the ass, but I will provide entertaining things to look at… probably.

Anyways, I’m hoping to highlight both classics, and films that continue to capture my imagination and passion after multiple viewing, as well as delve deeper into films that pique my interest. I have over 700 films in my collection, and I’d say I could probably easily cover a third of them in this series. This doesn’t even come close to the library of films on netflix available to me.

I’m going to start with my own collection though, I find that if I’ve spent money on a film I usually have a deeper commitment to it. I don’t have a planned end for this, I’d like to try to keep it up for as long as I can before runing out of steam.

I’ve mostly decided to start doing this to get myself writing again. I’ve been slacking in that department and hopefully someone still has this blog hidden in their rss feeds some where…

“Someone should really turn off that alarm,” a Valve rep says calmly from somewhere behind me. Our team had searched every inch of this area, but someone triggered an alarm that we couldn’t find. I’d never once played with any of the other three people in my team, and we were communicating well, but that damned alarm kept going off. The third, or possibly fourth, wave of zombies crashed up against the three of us still left alive leaving our weapons and health low, our morale lower. Then I notice something from the top of the scaffolding that appears to be a control panel of sorts.

Licensed games are generally the stuff that core gamers avoid. Shoddy production, poor decisions, lack of understanding, and attempting to appeal to a broad range of audiences usually leaves us core gamers a bit out in the cold. Strangely enough, High Voltage Software is developing one of the few licensed games coming out worth looking at. Based on the movie coming out this October, Astro Boy for the Wii, PS2, PS3, and DS, is shaping up to possibly something more than just another licensed title.

Dead To Rights Retribution
Soul Calibur PSP
Tekken 6
Katamari Forever
Brink
Wet
Fallout 3: Point Lookout
Brutal Legends
The Agency
Crime Craft
Sin and Punishment 2
Wii Sports Resort
Cave Story
Flipnote Studio
New Super Mario Brothers Wii

Pixel Junk Shooter
Fat Princess
Trash Panic
Afrika
Harvest Moon
Squishy Tank
Shiren The Wanderer
Neo Steam
Tatsunoko vs Capcom
Undead Knight
Half-Minute Hero
Fragile

Since these are more like daily wrap-ups, I’ll just list the games covered:
Left 4 Dead 2
IL 2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey
Astro Boy

When I first heard about Holy Invasion of Privacy Badman I though it would be on the slower side. More strategy, less action, kind of like the games it’s mocking. After getting some hands on time with the preview build I have to say that the game is, happily, very quickly paced and much more unique than I expected.

Here I am, in LA staying with my friend Heather Campbell (who also writes for Play, but is better at it than I).

If anyone actually reads this  blog anymore and is also in LA you should email me at shapermcATgmailDOTcom and we should hang out.

“When it’s done.” Lasse Seppänen, the producer for Alan Wake, has been saying that since the game was announced. Many of us have seen this language before; sometimes resulting in a fantastic but long awaited game, yet others faded away never to be heard from again. Now that the legendary when-it’s-done game—Duke Nukem Forever— is looking like it may have finally been laid to rest, the time is ripe to look at other titles that could fall into a sinkhole of vaporware.

I got a chance to do some interesting digging into the history of Alan Wake to find out what is currently know about the game. While I didn’t pick the bullet-pointed format I feel that it actually worked out for this piece.

So I finished my second semester at college, woohoo. I did pretty well, and even pulled my D in math up to a B. I… don’t have much to say about being back in school strangely enough. It’s a fantastic opportunity that I’m thankful to have, but when I think about what to say about my experience I don’t have much to offer.

Anyways, since I’m not taking any summer classes I’ve decided to get myself prepped for next semester with some study. There are two classes I plan to study for specifically for next semester: Philosophy and Japanese. Philosophy is really something I’ve looked forward to for a while now. Last semester I picked up Aristotle’s Poetics, and while I started to read it I haven’t had much spare time to finish it. I’m not worried that I’m going to do poorly in this class or anything, but I have had this university-level-course-in-a-box thing called The Birth of Western Philosophy: Plato and Aristotle, and I kind of feel like if I don’t use it now I won’t have a need to after next semseter. I broke down the lecture and reading schedule for it and if I do two a week I should be able to get the “course” done in seven weeks, at which point I plan to finish reading Poetics.

Japanese, on the other hand, is freaking me the hell out. It took me five years of Latin classes to finish up Latin 2 in high school (6th grade through my Junior year). I’m terrible with foreign languages. My degree program for UIC requires four semesters of a foreign language. Japanese is the foreign language I’m most familiar with, and also the one that would help me in my career the most. So, for lack of another language option that interested me (French was my back-up) I’ve bit the bullet and registered for Japanese. So that I feel as comfortable as I can going into next semester I picked up that crappy looking My Japanese Coach DS game app. Hopefully it will prepare me enough to get the edge I’ll need to pass the class. As a long term goal for my Japanese study, I hope to be able to watch a Kurosawa film without subtitles. If I do well enough that will be my treat in about two years.

I also plan on doing a bit of reading I have backed up:

Beneath the Wheel - Hermann Hesse (Mostly done, but I ran out of time before finals to finish it)
The Waste Land Prufrock and Other Observations - T.S. Eliot
Poetics - Aristotle
Trigger Happy - Steven Poole (read it a few years ago, but want to read it again)
At least one play by - Shakespeare (I’ve read a few, but have been meaning to read more)

I also will hopefully get Issue 9 of The Gamer’s Quarter finished so that I can be done with that project. Not that I’m eager to kill it, just that I feel like I’ve let a lot of people down taking this long to release it. I also want to make some  progress on a writing project I’ve been mulling over for about a year now that goes back even further. I’ll talk about that more if anything happens with it.