Black Death

Well, I thought this film was pretty extraordinary.

I rented it the other day at the Redbox, because I was bored, I had nothing to do, and I was already at the grocery store so I figured I'd take a look. Nothing really grabbed my eye, except for this one which I knew only from the name and because it starred Sean Bean. According to the plot summary and the box cover, it was a period piece piece set in England during the height of the Plague in 1348. That was enough to sell me, since I love period pieces, I love English history, and I love Sean Bean.

And while it definitely was a work of a historical fiction about the plague, it was actually something of a horror film in disguise, since the setting, mood, and events were extremely unsettling, upsetting, and downright terrifying. The story centered around a knight played by Sean Bean and his band of compatriots who are sent to a town that has been spared from the horrors of the plague, either because they have been blessed by the grace of god or perverted by the evil power of the devil. I won't tell you what they find there, but it isn't pretty.

Sean Bean is very good in his role of the god fearing knight, and the rest of the cast of mostly unknowns are fantastic as well. The lead role was actually that of a young monk sent along with the knights as their guide, and it should have been a star-making performance by the astoundingly good Eddie Redmayne. It was also fun seeing Tim McInnerny as a very scary peasant who may or may not be in league with the devil. McInnerny may be best known as Percy and Captain Darling on Blackadder, but he is a very talented actor who proved with this role that he's just as good at being scary as he is at being funny.

As a period piece, this film was impeccably produced, with perfect costumes and stunning sets. As an action film, there's only one big fight scene, but it is incredibly violent and brilliantly put together. As a horror film, it'll have you on the edge of your seat and sitting in bed later on with the lights on for an extra hour or two. As a film about religious faith, it managed the extraordinary feat of appearing reverential of people with powerful faith, but wary of those who abuse it as well. As a film, anyway, it was very good and I highly recommend it, if you have the stomach for the gore and unsettling mood.

Two thumbs up.

Top 10 Indiana Jones Death Scenes Video

I actually wrote this list a few years ago, but I decided to edit it together as a video. And, yes, that is my real voice. And, no, I'm not happy with it either. Anyway, let me know what you think:

Witchfinder: Lost and Gone Forever

The fifth and final issue of the Witchfinder miniseries "Lost and Gone Forever" hit stores yesterday, finishing off one of the best comic book stories I've read in a long time. Because it was written by Mike Mignola and John Arcudi, and takes place in the prehistory of their Hellboy/B.P.R.D. universe, it was very esoteric, strange, and hard to follow in places, and I'm still not quite sure what actually really happened over the course of the story, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, since I also came away very satisfied and glad I read it.

This miniseries (the second, I think, to star the character, although he has made a few appearances in the Hellboy comics) has Sir Edward Grey travel from Europe to Utah sometime during the late 1800s or early 1900s to stop a witch who has taken captive the soul of a Shaman and resurrected a bunch of cowboys into zombies. Or something like that. Like I said, it's a weird story that was never really explained, keeping things vague and confusing, but intentionally so. Anyway, it was a neat story that allowed for lots of scenes where Grey fought cowboy zombies.

The artwork is by comic book legend John Severin, who should be well known to any fans of western, war, or horror comics, or maybe even just comic books in general.  At 89, the guy is still creating some of the best looking comics I've ever seen. The story is great fun, but the entire series is worth checking out of only for some great work by a true legend. Just check out some of these pages:

Happy Birthday, Pete Conrad!

Here at the Blessed are the Geeks Blog, we're big fans of everybody who has ever been involved with NASA, and of Pete Conrad in particular.

Conrad was Commander of the Apollo 12 mission and became the third man to walk on the moon, after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's historic Apollo 11 mission a few months previous. Armstrong's first words after stepping on the moon are now famous and immortal, but Conrad's were much funnier:

"Whoopie! That may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me."

He was joking about the fact that Neil Armstrong was one of the tallest astronaut's while he was one of the shortest (5'6 to Neil's 5'11). But what really matters is that the man's first words after stepping onto the moon were a joke, and that's just awesome. His courage and dedication to his job are well known to everybody by virtue of the fact that he was a commander who led a team to the moon, but by all accounts he was also a great wit, a good man, and a brilliant, fun loving guy. He was killed in a motorcycle accident almost thirty years after his historic walk on the moon. Had he survived, he would be turning 81 today. Whoopie!

My Rifle, My Pony, and Me

I posted this video over in my top ten favorite singers post as something representative of Dean Martin's vocals, but it was buried there even though it's so cool it deserves its own post all to itself. This is taken from the western Rio Bravo, which wasn't actually a musical, even though it starred Martin and Ricky Nelson, both of whom get to sing a song or two. Anyway, this is just a really cool song by two really cool cowboys:

Red Dead Redemption

I should start a website called "The Poor Gamer," where I review videogames a year or two after they come out, since I only buy and play and comment on used games I buy after the price has come way down. Anyway, I picked up Red Dead Redemption a little while ago, Rockstar's open-world Western game, and it's ok.

That isn't to say it's bad, of course, just that it isn't the second-coming of Christ, as some videogame reviewers would have you believed, delivered from on high by God himself, and placed into the hands of gamers everywhere to bring peace to the face of the world. Then again, I'm not a professional game reviewer, so I don't assign seemingly arbitrary scores to games like "93.7" or some such nonsense. I tend to grade games by three different ranks: Great, ok, or bad. A great game is one that is, well, great, and keeps me hooked and coming back to play again and again, for weeks or months at a time. An ok game is fun, but maybe missing something or has some weird design choices, or just lacking in something that keeps me from really getting hooked. And a bad game is one that just isn't any fun, so I won't play it. Red Dead Redemption was just ok. I like it and respect the hell out of it, but it's just missing that crucial x factor that makes me really want to play it all the time, no matter what. At this point, I keep playing it because I bought it and because I don't mind it. You know, it's ok.

Graphically, however, it's extraordinary. This may, in fact, be the best looking game I've ever played. From the moment it begins and your cowboy main character steps off the train into a town straight out of the wild west, I was enthralled by the visual splendor. The character designs and animations are detailed and fluid and incredibly lifelike. The buildings -- both in and out -- are gorgeous and perfectly capture the feel of the old west. And the landscapes, from the rolling hills to the windswept deserts to the roaring rivers, were impeccably designed and brought to life. This game is so beautiful, I actually took a video of it with my ipod just so I could share some of the sweeping vistas:



The game itself, however, is just a little lacking. It's basically Grand Theft Auto with cowboys instead of gangsters, or maybe something closer to Grand Theft Horse and Carriage. The controls feel the same (and are just as wacky and obtuse), the structure is identical, and the tongue in cheek dialogue and quirky point of view is the same. The only real differences between this Rockstar game and their more famous one (other than the change to a Western setting) is that this time around there is a bit more of a penalty for breaking the law, since your fame and honor meeting goes down, effecting the gameplay, and also because the main character is now some kind of honorable man with a wife and kids back home who doesn't want to break the law or sleep with all of the hookers populating the game's saloons. Where's the fun in that?

He does kill bad guys, however, which is often very fun, even though the targeting system feels awkward, just like it did in GTA 4. Horseback riding has some wonderful animation and great sound effects, but it gets old real fast, since there is so much of it, the world is so expansive, and because it's just not that much fun. Your character can also join various poker games around town, which is a lot of fun and where I seem to spend most of my time. It seems silly that I'm spending most of my time in a videogame having my character play a card game, but there you go. It's actually a very fun and well done poker simulator.

The game is fun in small doses, since the western setting is so perfectly realized, the graphics are outstanding, and some of the missions are ok (the ones that involve shooting people), even if they all tend to blur together and get tedious as you go on. Still, it's worth checking out of only for how cool it is to ride your horse into the sunset as an old train engine whizzes by. But it's just ok.

The Voice

I don't know how to sing... and I mean that literally. It's not just that I'm a bad singer, but that I don't understand how singing works or how to make that kind of sound come out of my mouth. The best I can do is talk at a slightly higher pitch than I normally use for speaking, and hope that they words come out in some kind of rhythm... whatever that is. I have had people tell me I'm tone deaf, which I suppose must be true because I don't really understand what that means. What's a tone?

But boy do I love music, especially the sound of a great singer's voice. If I had one wish, it might be to have a great, soaring, lyrical voice like everybody else in the entire world seems to have. To me, that's about as unobtainable a super power as flight or invisibility.

Anyway, just for fun, I'm going to count down the ten singers whose voices I most wish I had. These are the people who, when I try to sing, it's their voices that I assume must be coming out of my mouth, even though the faces of the people around me tell me otherwise. Anyway, these are just the ten singers who I wish I could sing like, in descending order from awesome to even more awesome:


10. Jackson Browne

Happy Birthday, Christopher Lee!

Christopher Lee is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the most acting roles of anybody in this history of film. His filmography on the IMDB has 272 entries, which is absolutely astounding. Over the course of his career, he has fought Jedi, Gandalf, James Bond, and Van Helsing. He already has five films that were released or will be released in 2011 alone. He has two films scheduled for 2012 and one for 2013. Oh, and he just turned 89 today. I'm only 34, and I'm lucky if I can work up the energy to do dishes and my laundry in the same week.

All 272 of his films aren't great, of course, but I would guess that all are worth checking out because Christopher Lee is never not great. Here is just a short list of some of his most memorable roles:

Saruman: Lord of the Rings

Count Dooku: Star Wars

Lord Summerisle: The Wicker Man

Bond Villain Scaramanga: The Man With the Golden Gun

Dracula: A dozen different Hammer Horror Films

Flay: Gormenghast

Fu Manchu: Multiple films

Sherlock Holmes: Multiple films

And literally hundreds of others, in his past and presumably to come in the future. Have a happy and healthy birthday, and let's hope it's just the 89th of many more.

Blasters N Roses

I don't understand what this is, but I love it. Two of my favorite things have finally come together, Star Wars and GNR:

Top Ten Best Movie Monsters

I like monsters. The bigger the better. Put a monster in your movie and I'll go see it. Serve me a Monster Energy Drink and a Monster Cookie and I'll have a perfect evening's entertainment. Anyway, just for fun, I'm going to count down my top ten favorite movie monsters. Why not?

And keep in mind this isn't meant to be any kind of historical write up on the film industry's most memorable, important, or influential monsters. These are just the ten that I like the best, either because they scare me the most or just look the coolest. Also, I'm excluding dragons from this list, because dragons aren't really monsters, they're dragons. That's a whole 'nother list all together, and one I'm sure I'll get to sooner or later.

10. Gamera

Gamera is a giant turtle who walks on two legs, has giant fangs, can breathe fire, and flies. He's also totally awesome. He's the star of about a dozen movies, although he's far better known in Japan than he is over here. Gamera is the friend of children everywhere. 

9. Shelob

Shelob is a giant spider who lives in the mountains that border the land of Mordor in the Lord of the Rings novels and films. She is a being of pure evil who has lived for thousands of years feasting on those foolish enough to enter into her cave. She's disgusting, terrifying, and absolutely awful. There isn't nearly enough of her in Peter Jackson's third Lord of the Rings film Return of the King, but maybe that's for the best because what little of here we do see is horrifying.  


8. The Alien

The Alien (or xenomorph as it has come to be called) from the Alien film series is a masterwork of design. The look was created by H. R. Giger, and it is absolutely outstanding and incredibly scary. In fact, the alien would've scored a lot higher on this list, if only it had been giant-sized. It is very scary, however, and much of the success of the film, as well as the indelible impression the character has made on popular culture, is because of Giger's amazing visual design. 

7. Giant Squid

The Giant Squid from 20000 Leagues Under the Sea was totally awesome, but I think I maybe remember the one from the ride at Disney Land better than I do the one from the movie. Both are very good, however, even if the Squid effects haven't really help up so well over the years. As great as that film is, somebody should remake it already, so the story is more faithful to the original novel by Jules Verne, and so the Squid looks even more bad ass. 

6. Medusa

I don't care who you are or where you're from, The Medusa from the original Clash of the Titans scared the crap out of you the first time you saw it. This was some of the best work by Ray Harryhausen, the greatest stop motion animator in the history of film. This entire film was filled with his amazing work (including the Kraken, Pegasus, Bubo the Owl, and many more), but Medusa is my favorite because she's totally awesome.

5. Rancor

Back before everything went CG, the Star Wars films used to have lots of stop motion effects and puppets, the best of which was the Rancor from Return of the Jedi. No matter how old I get or how many times I watch this scene, it never stops being cool.

4. Dinosaurs from Jurassic Park

Is this cheating? I just can't pick a favorite! Anyway, everybody knows there's nothing in the world cooler than a dinosaur. The only reason the amazing dinosaurs from the Jurassic Park movies (that's right... of them from all three movies. The sequels may have been awful, but the dinosaurs were still awesome) didn't make the top spot was because, cool as they are, dinosaurs are real. Well, they used to be, anyway. 

3. Talos

Another awesome stop motion monster by Ray Harryhausen. Talos was the giant bronze colossus that came to life and attacked the heroes in the film Jason and the Argonauts. If you've never seen this movie, go rent it as soon as possible because it's amazing and full of Harryhausen's best work, including Talso himself and the army of skeleton warriors that attack the Argonauts.

2. King Kong

Now we're getting to the real classics. All those other monsters are awesome, but King Kong is bad ass. Everybody knows and loves King Kong, including all of the people who haven't seen any of the movies. Though, to be sure, there's only one King Kong movie, and it came out in 1933, was in black and white, and was filmed with stop motion animation (mostly!). The Peter Jackson version is very nice looking and well animated in full CG, but the movie is terrible, and the character is lacking in charm. King Kong is without a doubt the greatest American movie monster of all time...

1. Godzilla

Who'd you think was going to win this thing? Charlize Theron? Godzilla is the king of all monsters, and with good reason. Godzilla has starred in about 30 films spanning almost sixty years, making him perhaps the most popular film character of all time, monster or not. By comparison, James Bond has only appeared in about 22 films spanning about fifty years. Oh, and Godzilla could eat all six James Bond actors and still have room for everybody who's ever appeared as Sherlock Holmes, Hamlet, or Orson Welles. Godzilla is just the greatest movie monster of all time.

And, yes, he did fight King Kong.

In Memoriam: Randy "Macho Man" Savage (1952 - 2011)

A moment of silence, please, for The Macho Man, one of the all time greatest professional wrestlers in the history of the sport. Honor his memory by snapping into a Slim Jim. Read more about his life and career here.

Fallout 3 (Revisited)

I beat Fallout 3 about a week and a half ago. I've been meaning to write up my final thoughts on the game (you can read my initial impressions and introduction here), but I've been too busy playing Fallout 3. As soon as I beat the game, I immediately went and restarted it from the beginning. This game was so good, so rich with story, so full of quests that are impossible to complete in one play through, and so open-ended that every player's experience is going to be different, that I knew I had only scratched the surface of what it had to offer after completing it the first time. When I complete the quest again, chances are good I'll create another character and go for a third trip.

The games choices are open-ended and structured so you can play the game almost anyway you'd like. If a character has an item you need, you can entire try to talk them into giving it to you, go on a quest to perform some task for them, or just kill them and take it. The first time around, I played the hero, while this second time around I had more fun and terrorized the entire Capital Wasteland, killing anybody who got in my way and taking the quests that were provided by the bad guys. I don't want this to come out sounding weird, since I'm really a very nice, moral person in the real world, but there is just something very cool about a videogame that lets you kill just about every non player controlled character in the game. 

Here's an example of what I'm talking about: Early on in the game you are approached by a shady character who asks you to detonate a nuclear bomb in the town of Megaton because the criminal syndicate in which he is involved wants it wiped off the map. When I played as a hero, I said no way, then went and turned him into the sheriff. This time around, I said sure. Blowing up the town cut off he quests you could acquire there, but it links you up to other quests from the criminal syndicate that would've been closed off otherwise. Also, the view of the town blowing up in a giant mushroom cloud on the horizon was one of the most astounding visuals I've ever seen in any videogame. It was suitably beautiful and horrifying.

Even forgetting about the quests and missions entirely, it's still fun just wandering around the wastelands of the post apocalyptic D.C. At one point while wandering around at random, my radio picked up a strange signal that sounded like gibberish. As I began to investigate, moving closer to the signal's source, I discovered a crashed UFO with a dead alien lying next to it. After searching the wreckage,  I found an alien blaster that kills just about every enemy in the game with one hit, disintegrating them so only a pile of ash remains. I don't care who you are, that's just bad ass, and it's only one of many little secrets and easter eggs I found littered throughout the game. The world is huge, but it pays to go exploring.

The game isn't completely perfect, however, since I found a few bugs here and there, though never so frequent or so catastrophic that they ruined the experience. Sometimes my character will slide around even though I'm standing still or I'll jump a few spaces after killing an enemy. Once my character got stuck to a wall, and another time the game froze up completely, but luckily I save often so nothing was lost except the time it took me to restart my Xbox. Also, while it's nice to have the in-game radio (with the lovable DJ Three Dog and some wonderfully atmospheric big band tunes), it got really repetitive after a while, because the DJ keeps repeating the same news items over and over again, and there are only about five or six songs that keep playing.

However, having said all that, Fallout 3 is my new favorite game on the Xbox 360, and one of the most fun and satisfying games I've ever played in my entire life. Even though it came out about two years ago, I'm still getting hours of play out of it, and I don't see the end of that coming any time soon. Even after I do complete it again and find myself ready to move on, there is downloadable content to add on and even a sequel set in Vegas, although it is supposed to be very buggy and not as good, but I'm sure I'll pick that up once it comes down in price. If you haven't played this game, check it out because it works both as the best action and RPG title I've ever played. And if you have played it, get back in there and play some more.