I am saddened by the death of film director John Hughes.
When I think of the 1980s, I think of two things -- High School and the movies of John Hughes. I don't know if John Hughes' films perfectly captured the high school experience my friends and I lived, or if his films shaped the way that we perceived the world around us. All I know is that John Hughes' early films have touched my heart in wonderful ways. I empathized with Molly Ringwald's character in Pretty in Pink. I wasn't one of the popular kids in school, but I wasn't one of the rebels either. My lot was somewhere between them all. When I watched The Breakfast Club, I saw a little of myself in all the male characters. None of them were me, but all of them were. I always wanted to be as self assured as Ferris Bueller, but felt like a working class version of Cameron.
But it wasn't just the teen films of Hughes that touched my heart. On the contrary, his films seemed to grow with me -- though some like Mr. Mom would be films my life would have to catch up to. In 1987 and 1988, Hughes wrote three films that have shaped the way I look at life and family.
Plains, Trains, and Automobiles is THE classic Thanksgiving film and Hughes keeps you laughing until the end...when you weep love for John Candy's character.
She's Having a Baby wonderfully captures the worry and stress of the soon to be father. When Jody and I were making our "family plans," I was constantly having flashbacks to the many times that she and I had watched the film. I didn't experience many of the anxieties that Kevin Bacon's character goes through. But when Clio was rushed off to NICU because she wasn't clearing the fluid out of her lungs and I had to simultaneously comfort my wife, accompany my other daughter Nora to her first bath, and run off to NICU to check up on my second twin, in a strange way it was Hughes' film that prepared me for the possible combination of joy, fear, sadness, and elation that accompanied the birth of Jody and my twins.
And then there's Uncle Buck. Who doesn't love Uncle Buck?
One could go on and on about how entertaining most of John Hughes' films were. One does wonder what happened after Home Alone that so many of Hughes' films became slapstick comedies about young children, though I imagine that might be an bi-product of being a grandfather. Besides, I kinda liked Drillbit Taylor -- which was his idea, if not screenplay.
Yes, I am saddened by the death of John Hughes, but I did find one thing that made me feel hopeful when I read the Hollywood Reporter obit. It included the clause, "He is survived by his wife of 39 years." It is nice to read that someone who wrote so well about family was married to the same woman for almost 4 decades. It's particularly nice when we live in times when we see so many public and messy divorces.
Thanks for the stories. Now...where to begin with the Hughes marathon. I think Vacation is a perfect place to start.
Thursday, August 06, 2009
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Gail Gygax and Family Want a Gary Gygax Memorial in Lake Geneva, WI
Reporting out of Janesville, WI, Kayla Bunge has a nice public interest story about Gail Gygax's desire to have a memorial built in Lake Geneva in memory the founder of much of modern gaming.
According to the article, Mrs. Gygax desires the statue be built in Library Park on the shore of Lake Geneva. I can write, based on personal experience, that Library Park would be a perfect location. The one time I visited Lake Geneva, I drove by the Gygax residence (I should have stopped by, but didn't) and spent some time on the shore of lovely Lake Geneva. It was a wonderful trip and is a beautiful location.
According to the article, Mrs. Gygax desires the statue be built in Library Park on the shore of Lake Geneva. I can write, based on personal experience, that Library Park would be a perfect location. The one time I visited Lake Geneva, I drove by the Gygax residence (I should have stopped by, but didn't) and spent some time on the shore of lovely Lake Geneva. It was a wonderful trip and is a beautiful location.
Monday, August 03, 2009
THE HURT LOCKER: Anne Thompson Interviews Kathryn Bigelow
Film news analyst/reporter, and sometime critic, Anne Thompson has migrated her insightful film industry column away from industry dinosaur Variety over to the IndieWire blog network. The column keeps its "Thompson on Hollywood" title and Thompson continues to provide high value content.
In a recent post, Thompson opines on the Oscar worthiness of Kathryn Bigelow's latest film THE HURT LOCKER which is an early dark horse candidate. Embedded below is the 8 minute interview Thompson recorded with Bigelow at the Toronto Film Festival.
Thompson's move to Indie Wire would seem to be a good match for the analyst. Historically, Thompson seems to favor "independent films" -- by which she typically means "art film" rather than movies like Evil Dead, though there are exceptions -- and it was always a slightly awkward fit at the industry oriented magazines like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter where she formerly hosted her columns. Her move from Variety comes after her print column had been canceled by the magazine and her duties had been completely shifted over to Variety's digital portal. She had been a Deputy Editor for the magazine before they made her a full-time blogger, a shift that no doubt included a substantial reduction in pay and benefits. Variety, like The Hollywood Reporter, doesn't quite seem to know how best to use the internet -- or print -- in its business model.
The move away from Variety appears, on the surface, to be less contentious than her move away from The Hollywood Reporter. When she left The Hollywood Reporter for Variety, The Hollywood Reporter made her leave her column masthead Risky Business behind. It didn't matter to THR that Thompson had been writing a column of that title since her days as an analyst at LA Weekly, they wanted to benefit from the reputation that Thompson had built up while working at THR. Risky Business has tried hard to live up to Thompson's legacy, but has continually fallen short.
This blogger's respect for Thompson's columns shouldn't be read as blind worship, Thompson has significant blind spots in her analysis. Her vision of Hollywood's past, with regard to quality and originality, is sheer fantasy. Her love of independent film often leads her to overlook excellent blockbuster fare. Not to mention that her obsession with "independent film," has as its foundation a fairly narrow definition of what constitutes independent. She also, as seems so often today among film analysts and reviewers in the post-internet era, seems to find it difficult to avoid being a political blogger from time to time. She is far from perfect, but she is very much worth reading if you want a more sophisticated view of the industry than you'll get from the "hype mags."
In a recent post, Thompson opines on the Oscar worthiness of Kathryn Bigelow's latest film THE HURT LOCKER which is an early dark horse candidate. Embedded below is the 8 minute interview Thompson recorded with Bigelow at the Toronto Film Festival.
Thompson's move to Indie Wire would seem to be a good match for the analyst. Historically, Thompson seems to favor "independent films" -- by which she typically means "art film" rather than movies like Evil Dead, though there are exceptions -- and it was always a slightly awkward fit at the industry oriented magazines like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter where she formerly hosted her columns. Her move from Variety comes after her print column had been canceled by the magazine and her duties had been completely shifted over to Variety's digital portal. She had been a Deputy Editor for the magazine before they made her a full-time blogger, a shift that no doubt included a substantial reduction in pay and benefits. Variety, like The Hollywood Reporter, doesn't quite seem to know how best to use the internet -- or print -- in its business model.
The move away from Variety appears, on the surface, to be less contentious than her move away from The Hollywood Reporter. When she left The Hollywood Reporter for Variety, The Hollywood Reporter made her leave her column masthead Risky Business behind. It didn't matter to THR that Thompson had been writing a column of that title since her days as an analyst at LA Weekly, they wanted to benefit from the reputation that Thompson had built up while working at THR. Risky Business has tried hard to live up to Thompson's legacy, but has continually fallen short.
This blogger's respect for Thompson's columns shouldn't be read as blind worship, Thompson has significant blind spots in her analysis. Her vision of Hollywood's past, with regard to quality and originality, is sheer fantasy. Her love of independent film often leads her to overlook excellent blockbuster fare. Not to mention that her obsession with "independent film," has as its foundation a fairly narrow definition of what constitutes independent. She also, as seems so often today among film analysts and reviewers in the post-internet era, seems to find it difficult to avoid being a political blogger from time to time. She is far from perfect, but she is very much worth reading if you want a more sophisticated view of the industry than you'll get from the "hype mags."
Friday, July 31, 2009
Hulu Recommendation Friday #2 -- She-Ra: Princess of Power
For those who grew up as "latchkey kids" in the 1980s, there were an amazing array of weekday cartoons to keep us entertained as we put off doing homework and waited for one of our parents to come home from work. The kings of the weekday afternoon set were GI JOE, TRANSFORMERS, and HE-MAN, but I always had fond place in my heart for SHE-RA: PRINCESS OF POWER. Yes it was beat for beat HE-MAN with a female protagonist, but that just meant I got to watch another half an our of HE-MAN style action and that was cool with me.
I think that fact that Larry DiTillio, who wrote a movie column for the role playing game magazine Different Worlds and also wrote a classic adventure (Isle of Darksmoke) for the Tunnels and Trolls Roleplaying game, wrote the pilot episode probably didn't hurt my enjoyment of the show. Larry will be running a Tunnels and Trolls adventure at this year's Trollcon. We haven't interviewed Larry on Geekerati yet, but we did interview another 80s cartoon writer -- who worked on GI JOE and SPIDER-MAN AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS -- Christy Marx.
As usual, click play and then click the full screen button and enjoy.
I think that fact that Larry DiTillio, who wrote a movie column for the role playing game magazine Different Worlds and also wrote a classic adventure (Isle of Darksmoke) for the Tunnels and Trolls Roleplaying game, wrote the pilot episode probably didn't hurt my enjoyment of the show. Larry will be running a Tunnels and Trolls adventure at this year's Trollcon. We haven't interviewed Larry on Geekerati yet, but we did interview another 80s cartoon writer -- who worked on GI JOE and SPIDER-MAN AND HIS AMAZING FRIENDS -- Christy Marx.
As usual, click play and then click the full screen button and enjoy.
It's Training is Now Complete. "Star Wars" Can Now Be Seen "In Concert"
I can feel a disturbance in the Force. It is as if all of the money from thousands of Star Wars fans was removed from their bank accounts in one swift moment.
Having betrayed loyal fans with mediocre sequels, for which we fanatical Star Wars fans have waited in lines over night in sleeping bags just to buy tickets, George Lucas has found a new way to empty the wallets of Generation X fans who have loved the franchise since they were between the ages of 4 and 10. Lucas knows that regardless of how disappointed fans may be with the narrative of any particular film, those first few measures from the Star Wars theme still sends chills up the spines of Gen X inner children everywhere.
Now fans can wait in digital queues for untold hours in the hopes of getting a chance to fork out $35.00 - $85.00 per seat, in order to avoid paying upwards of $300 per seat to a "ticket agent" to watch Star Wars in Concert. Fans can now go to see a full orchestra play the songs of Star Wars to various High Definition movie clips projected on a big screen in a kind of multimedia "high art" extravaganza where the conductor will pause between sections of the show to describe things like "Leitmotif" (which is pronounced lite-motif not leet-motif -- a leet-motif is that chortle you hear every time you get owned by a 13 year old sniper in Call of Duty) to an audience who would actually be better served attending a performance of Das Rheingold.
Crap. As cynical as I am trying to be, I am finding it very hard not to be one of those Gen X-ers waiting in a virtual queue. There really is something magnificent about John Williams' score -- even in the lesser films.
Having betrayed loyal fans with mediocre sequels, for which we fanatical Star Wars fans have waited in lines over night in sleeping bags just to buy tickets, George Lucas has found a new way to empty the wallets of Generation X fans who have loved the franchise since they were between the ages of 4 and 10. Lucas knows that regardless of how disappointed fans may be with the narrative of any particular film, those first few measures from the Star Wars theme still sends chills up the spines of Gen X inner children everywhere.
Now fans can wait in digital queues for untold hours in the hopes of getting a chance to fork out $35.00 - $85.00 per seat, in order to avoid paying upwards of $300 per seat to a "ticket agent" to watch Star Wars in Concert. Fans can now go to see a full orchestra play the songs of Star Wars to various High Definition movie clips projected on a big screen in a kind of multimedia "high art" extravaganza where the conductor will pause between sections of the show to describe things like "Leitmotif" (which is pronounced lite-motif not leet-motif -- a leet-motif is that chortle you hear every time you get owned by a 13 year old sniper in Call of Duty) to an audience who would actually be better served attending a performance of Das Rheingold.
Crap. As cynical as I am trying to be, I am finding it very hard not to be one of those Gen X-ers waiting in a virtual queue. There really is something magnificent about John Williams' score -- even in the lesser films.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Diana Jones Awards Committee Announces the 2009 Shortlist
Among the awards given out in the gaming universe, none is as enigmatic as the Diana Jones Award. Since 2001, the award has been handed out to a worthy winner selected by the anonymous Diana Jones Award Committee, which is made up of "games-industry alumni and illuminati". The award is dedicated to rewarding "the person, product, company, event or any other thing that has, in the opinion of its mostly anonymous committee of games industry luminaries, best demonstrated the quality of “excellence” in the world of hobby-gaming in the previous year."
The award bucks the continuing trend of "people's choice" awards that dominate the hobby today, from the Ennies to the more democratic than ever Origin Awards. The Diana Jones Award isn't about popularity, it is about "excellence." What excellence is as a variable is known only to the secret cabal who votes for the Diana Jones Award, but in past years the winners have come from very different corners of the gaming hobby.
Last year the award was given out to two recipients (there was a tie):
In 2006, the award went not to a game but to a Convention Charity Auction. Excellence can be defined in many ways, but certainly promoting your hobby through good works certainly qualifies.
This year's short list includes one real surprise and others that fit within what many would view as a "standard" view of gaming excellence, which is to say the list includes some very fun games. The other nominee is "Jeepform," a style of role playing that would make the "role playing is an artform" advocates of the early days of the hobby very proud.
This year's list is as follows:
My personal hope is that 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons (4e) will win the day, but I wouldn't place any money on it. I believe that 4e has done something that has become rare in role playing games today. It has attempted to create a rules set that appeals to new gamers, it is an active attempt to bring new people into the hobby with an elegant system that remains exciting throughout long term campaign play. To do this the game incorporated elements from the Burning Wheel system (the skill challenge system is very similar to the resolution system for BW), the Savage Worlds game system (4e was designed to be played with minimal preparation, helping those who have less time to play still have an opportunity for deep play), Feng Shui (the inclusion of minion rules for those pests who should be easily dispatched), and Trading Card Games (the inclusion of a unified tag system which are coherent and consistent). The game is a marvel to play and is very much on the cutting edge of game design and community promotion, don't even get me into how the Organized Play elements of 4e help small store to promote the hobby. 4e is a unified effort to promote role playing as a hobby.
All the others are good games that push gaming innovations in different ways and deserve consideration.
The award bucks the continuing trend of "people's choice" awards that dominate the hobby today, from the Ennies to the more democratic than ever Origin Awards. The Diana Jones Award isn't about popularity, it is about "excellence." What excellence is as a variable is known only to the secret cabal who votes for the Diana Jones Award, but in past years the winners have come from very different corners of the gaming hobby.
Last year the award was given out to two recipients (there was a tie):
- Grey Ranks -- an independant rpg where players take on the role of youths during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. In this case excellence referred to the way the game used simulation as a powerful presentation of history and for pushing the art of narrative storytelling to a new level.
- Open Design -- Wolfgang Baur's efforts at creating a game design community supported by patrons involved in the creation process was awarded for its contribution to the hobby.
In 2006, the award went not to a game but to a Convention Charity Auction. Excellence can be defined in many ways, but certainly promoting your hobby through good works certainly qualifies.
This year's short list includes one real surprise and others that fit within what many would view as a "standard" view of gaming excellence, which is to say the list includes some very fun games. The other nominee is "Jeepform," a style of role playing that would make the "role playing is an artform" advocates of the early days of the hobby very proud.
This year's list is as follows:
• Dominion, a card game by Donald X. Vaccarino (published by Rio Grande Games)
• Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, a role-playing game by Rob Heinsoo, Mike Mearls, and James Wyatt (published by Wizards of the Coast)
• Jeepform, a game-style from Scandinavia (fostered by the Vi åker jeep collective)
• Mouse Guard, a role-playing game by Luke Crane (published by Archaia Studios Press)
• Sweet Agatha, a mystery game by Kevin Allen Jr (self-published)
The winner of the 2009 Award will be announced on Wednesday 12th August, at the annual Diana Jones Award and Freelancer Party in Indianapolis, the unofficial start of the Gen Con Indy convention.
About the Award
The Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming was founded and first awarded in 2001. It is presented annually to the person, product, company, event or any other thing that has, in the opinion of its mostly anonymous committee of games industry luminaries, best demonstrated the quality of “excellence” in the world of hobby-gaming in the previous year. The winner of the Award receives the Diana Jones trophy.
The short-list and eventual winner are chosen by the Diana Jones Committee, a mostly anonymous group of games-industry alumni and illuminati.
Past winners include Peter Adkison, Jordan Weisman, the role-playing games Nobilis, Sorcerer, and My Life with Master, and the board-game Ticket to Ride. This is the ninth year of the Award.
My personal hope is that 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons (4e) will win the day, but I wouldn't place any money on it. I believe that 4e has done something that has become rare in role playing games today. It has attempted to create a rules set that appeals to new gamers, it is an active attempt to bring new people into the hobby with an elegant system that remains exciting throughout long term campaign play. To do this the game incorporated elements from the Burning Wheel system (the skill challenge system is very similar to the resolution system for BW), the Savage Worlds game system (4e was designed to be played with minimal preparation, helping those who have less time to play still have an opportunity for deep play), Feng Shui (the inclusion of minion rules for those pests who should be easily dispatched), and Trading Card Games (the inclusion of a unified tag system which are coherent and consistent). The game is a marvel to play and is very much on the cutting edge of game design and community promotion, don't even get me into how the Organized Play elements of 4e help small store to promote the hobby. 4e is a unified effort to promote role playing as a hobby.
All the others are good games that push gaming innovations in different ways and deserve consideration.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Hulu Recommendation Friday: Robotech -- The Shadow Chronicles
Hulu's selection keeps getting better and better. Spend a little time in front of the CRT (or flatscreen) and watch the recent update of the Robotech Saga.
What will be the fate of the Earth? Just click play and toggle the Full Screen button.
What will be the fate of the Earth? Just click play and toggle the Full Screen button.
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