Netflix Wednesdays: Timer (2009)

Review for Timer (2009)
Written and Directed by: Jac Schaeffer
Starring: Emma Caulfield, Michelle Borth, John Patrick Amedori
Available on Netflix as of 3/30/2016

Review
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Timer is an indie rom-com that takes place in a world where people are swept up in the latest dating craze. It's called the Timer, and it counts down, assuming your partner also has a Timer, to the day when you two will first meet, and the moment that you lay eyes on each other. Our main character, Oona ("as in Uma Thurman?") has a Timer, but her partner does not and therefore, it isn't counting down yet. This is a cause of distress, because like lots of young adults, Oona is concerned that she's never going to meet that special someone.

David Bowie: The Man Who Sold The World (1970)

Continuing our examination of Bowie, The Man Who Sold the World (1970) represents what some critics call the first true Bowie. While to me this reads as pure showmanship, I think perhaps it's important to recognize the musical significance of a new guitarist, but to say that out loud is to admit that I had to look to a Rolling Stone article to even notice.

The Man Who Sold the World is definitely a continued change, experimentation, and evolution of Bowie, but I believe, as we go through his and other band's discographies, that whether we like it or not from a critical perspective, every artist is always evolving. Perhaps that's unfair considering I haven't hit the backend of Weezer's discography yet, but we'll start with evolution as the primary thesis of these analyses.

Let's go, track by track, through Bowie's third strike, and in many ways, the one that would define his public persona more.

Opinion Sunday: Beyonce's Formation

Am I late to the party?  I suppose so, but that's okay. Beyonce doesn't need my opinion anyway. She's kicking it. She's slaying it.

Retrospective for 3/26/2016

This week on Expository Conundrum we talked about,

Space Oddity by David Bowie
Stardew Valley by ConcernedApe
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

As usual we have Bowie sitting outside of the loop a little bit. That guy did always like to be unique. But if you want to start with the title track being about life and death, or perhaps just a dissociative state of mind between yourself and your world in general (I mean we could take that all the way to gender dysphoria if we really wanted too), then we might begin to see where he and Cormac McCarthy begin to line up.

But life and death is kind of an easy line to draw.

Book Review Friday: All The Pretty Horses (1994)

Book Review for All the Pretty Horses (2015)
Written by: Cormac McCarthy
Alfred A. Knopf,  pp. 302

Review

Cormac McCarthy is one of the greatest American Authors of the last half century. I say this and I've read all of four books of his eleven. His modal nihilism set against the back drop of the most existential strips of land around Texas and Mexico combined with the brutal violent realism in his stories creates tones that elevate the mostly godless written words into something resembling religious ritual.

But enough generalization.

Steam Queue Thursdays: Stardew Valley (2016)

Review for Stardew Valley (2016)
Developed by: Concerned Ape
Published by: Chucklefish Games
Genre: Farming-Survival-RPG

Review
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Developed, Scored, Written by one person over four years, Stardew Valley is the debut (as far as I can tell) game of ConcernedApe. If E.Y.E. Cybermancy is a good case for how a first game can go awfully wrong, then consider this the opposite. Released roughly a month ago, Stardew Valley has remained a consistent bestseller on the Steam list, already breaking half a million copies sold.

I bought this game wanting to see what all the hype was about and found myself sucked in, knocking out several weeks of in-game play just by virtue of discovering everything I could do. This game has that appeal, and to cover exactly why, let's get into the reviewing.

David Bowie: Space Oddity (1969)

Space Oddity (1969) is actually titled David Bowie, much like his first album. This is interesting because it goes to show the degree to which that first album from last week was relatively unheard. The first track, "Space Oddity" takes the title because it is without a doubt the standout track on the album. Even I had heard the song before even knowing that David Bowie was the mind behind it.

Beyond that this album features so much more jamming than the previous album did. Songs often last a minute longer than their run time, and Bowie isn't afraid to drop his lyrics and voice out to let the music carry the song.

So we will once again go track by track to examine not only the obvious masterpiece, but the evolution of Bowie's sound. Here the Beatles have fallen away and something more rock and folk has taken root.

Jeff's Opinion: About Jeff

Opinion Sunday, all bets are off. I'm rolling up my sleeves. I'm going to tell you exactly how I feel about something, anything, myself, for instance.

What I mean is my origin, my reasons for being, the self-belief I have, I need to talk about it. I need to communicate what it's like to be me so that when I piss people off, when I make dumb statements or arguments, that at least it's understandable.

Not that everything or anything I say is dumb... okay, well you know. This is what we're here to talk about.

Retrospective: Week 1

Retrospective for 3/19/2016

Blog Posts this week:

David Bowie: Introduction & David Bowie (1967)

Death Note Episode 1: Rebirth

Netflix Wednesdays: Legend of Drunken Master (1994)

Steam Queue: EYE Divine Cybermancy (2011)

The Video Game Debate

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The introductory week for Expository Conundrum daily has revealed a great depth in the fields of study we’re engaged in. We’ve listened to classic music and rock inspired by the sixties, looked at anime that captures japan in the early turn of the century, watched folk story inspired mid-nineties kung-fu, played rather culturally significant merger of sc-fi, samurai, catholic, French video games, and discussed in great detail the significance of media studies and moral outrage about one of the newest forms of art.

The Video Game Debate: Video Games are Complicated

Book Review for The Video Game Debate (2015)
Edited by: Rachel Kowert & Thorsten Quandt
Genre: Research Essays
Routledge, 195 pp.

Review

The Video Game Debate is a collection of scholarly articles about the social, psychological, and cultural impact of video games. More specifically, the essays examine the ways in which Video Games and their potential affects on the mental health of those who play them have been studied and what conclusions can be drawn at the present moment in time. Since the book was put together and released last year it's pretty safe to say that the conclusions, studies, and information in the book is entirely up-to-date.

Steam Queue Thursdays: E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy (2011)

Review for: E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy (2011)
Developed and Published by: Streum on Studio
Genre: FPS-RPG

Review

EYE Divine Cybermancy is the premier (and only) game from French team Streum on Studio. Released directly on Steam, this project may fit a good place for "dream big, fail big" as a motto. We'll get into the specifics but it's important to understand the game, even if it didn't suffer a few major crash bugs, is rough around the edges, and lacking in the aesthetic finesse it requires to be successful.

Netflix Wednesdays: Legend of Drunken Master (Drunken Master 2)

The Legend of the Drunken Master (1994)

Directed by: Chia-Liung Liu

Written by: Edward Tang, Man-Ming Tong, and Kai-Chi Yuen

Starring: Jackie Chan, Ho-Sung Pak, Lung Ti, Anita Mui

Film Available as of 3/15/2016

NOTE: There were meant to be photos to go with this. However, due to the nature of Netflix's video player I wasn't able to get any. I recommend watching and next week I'll have fixed the problem. Enjoy.

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When I sat down to watch Legend of Drunken Master (1994) I didn't really hover around. I didn't pay attention to who the stars were, and I had the vague idea from the title that it was going to be a Martial Arts film. I had no idea that it was a Jackie Chan film.

Jackie Chan? Remember? That guy who made all those crazy zany action films in the nineties and early two thousands? I practically grew up during the American explosion of this martial arts stuntman. And it's easily been more than a decade since I watched one of his films.

Death Note Episode 1: Rebirth

Introduction

We have all considered it. If we could kill anyone in the world, magically, without even incriminating ourselves, wouldn't we? Would there be anything such as abiding by crimes happening in front of us. If we happened to be in a store that happened to get robbed while we were there, would we stop it?

The fact is that most people feel that the world would be better off minus a few people. Rapists, Murderers, some Politicians. Death Note capitalizes on these feelings. It shows us a world where one man gets the power to kill anyone he wants. And it takes a look at the psychological, social, criminal, and realistic impacts of such power.

The first episode, Rebirth, is a great introduction to Death Note. It is a great argument for the medium of Anime. The best aspects of Anime's unique style comes together with a demonic talent for shot framing that only works in this medium. Death Note is a special anime, worth not just one week, but thirty-seven weeks of appreciation.

Death Note is a gem. It's one of the greatest stories from the last decade. It's one of the best psychological thrillers, detective stories, and divine epics rolled into one. So join me as I take apart the series and examine is cinematic, animated, narrative, and psychological messages.

David Bowie: Introduction & David Bowie (1967)

Introduction

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David Bowie is one of the most influential English musicians in the world. His career spanning from the late 60s to the release of Blackstar just this year, he produced masterpieces like "Space Oddity", "The Man Who Sold the World," and albums like The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust. He was a man genre-defiant and stuck with nothing for long, he experimented with pop, rock, folk, electronica, dance, grunge, and bandstand songs throughout his career.

Despite his popularity, my exposure to David Bowie would come later in life. I knew he was a major musician of significant popularity. When I did listen to his discography, it surprised me how many recognizable tunes he had made.

The twenty-seven studio albums of David Bowie represent a wide variety of musical styles. We will see, even in his earliest albums, that Bowie was an experimental musician at heart.