Author Archives: tony

How goes the war against the humans?

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I’ve been using that phrase (How goes the war against the humans?) since I first played Wing Commander II sometime in the very early 90’s. I had an Intel 386DX with 1MB of memory, and a Soundblaster compatible sound card (couldn’t afford a real soundblaster). That computer kept me going from the end of the first year at University (when I replaced my Amstrad 1512 with it) to the end of University and beyond. It got slowly upgraded to the point of uselessness and finally replaced. I blogged a while back about the moment I got rid of the last bits (keyboard mainly).

Anyway, Wing Commander II was just amazing.  There is a moment during the introduction when a conductor taps his music stand, and then an orchestra plays the intro while scrolling into view over the horizon (you can check out all the music here).  I was amazed.  Shortly after that is a cut scene, and amazingly, some folk have converted all the in-game speech and have it on the web, here’s a link to the file with the quote in question.

The thing that got me started looking for that, is that I’m still quoting games, movies and music from more than 15 years ago.  In fact, the whole conversation with a friend started when I tried to work out what I did on Sundays before the internet.  One of those things was play computer games, Wing Commander II being one of them.  Games and movies from my early 20’s have had such a lasting effect on my speech and memories.  I’m the kind of annoying nerdy geek who quotes this kind of stuff at random during conversation, even when I know no one around me will have a clue what I’m on about.

I’ve been asking people I’ve not seen for a long time “how goes the war against the humans?” when we see each other, since 1991, and most of them still have no clue what the hell I’m on about.  It’s amazing to me the impact that art (essentially) can have on memory.  I have lasting and vivid memories of Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, F19 Stealth Bomber, and a bunch of other very early games in the early 90’s.  But equally, I have memories and still use quotes from movies around that time and even earlier.  When someone asks if I’d like to play a game, I still respond with (mashed up) quotes from WarGames (how about a nice game of tic-tac-toe or, yes, how about a game of thermonuclear global war?).

Maybe I’m easily impressionable?  I find myself saying ‘hmm, upgrades?’ and ‘guns, lots of guns’, and ‘i know kung-fu’ quite a bit as well (from the various Matrix movies).

Anyway, after finding the web site linked above, and listening to that intro another thing became clear.  Not only do I have vivid memories of playing a lot of Wing Commander II, but hearing that speech opened up a bunch of additional memories that I don’t think about as much.  I was reading The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant around the same time, I was living in a flat in Sheffield, I used to watch Northern Exposure, I used to eat a lot of tuna and salad cream on toast.  I used the launderette just up a hill not far from the flat (which is something I had totally forgotten until just now), and I hated it.  I used to get up at 5am to catch three buses to get to work (until I met some other guys at the same place and starting getting a lift in, Jack Dainty, Chris Philips, they were good times).  I remember Charles Dobson coming to visit and we bought a crate of beer from a local off licence, and we either dropped it and/or some of the cans exploded in the shop.  So many good memories.

So it’s amazing to me how the sound from a computer game can open up memories of the same time that I’ve not thought about for such a long time.  I’m the same with smells and music, sometimes a smell or a song will bang open a massive collection of memories I’d totally neglected to refresh over the years.

Like the Graceland album, which evokes a vivid memory of walking to Jack Dainty’s house in the early morning, through a couple of parks in Sheffield.  Playing on my fake-walkman casette player would be that album (I had very little music on tape), and I’d play it full blast and watch the sun come up over the trees to burn off the morning mist while I walked.  And then we’d listen to Chris’ Michelle Shocked album in the car on the way to the labs.

So yeh, if you ever meet me, and I ask you how goes the war against the humans, just lie and tell me it’s going fine and that the Kilrathi shall once again be the supreme beings in the universe, and all will be well.

And I’ll just nod.  Pleased with our mighty power.

Midnight Run

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In a continuing theme of finding random films on Sky Movies that I’ve not seen yet, we watched Midnight Run last night.  It’s a reasonably typical buddy-cop action comedy style movie from the late 80’s staring Robert De Niro.  The story centres around De Niro’s character, an ex-Chicago cop turned bounty hunter, his history with the mob, and a bail bond collection he has to bring back before midnight in five days from the start of the flick.

The otherwise simple collection is complication by the involvement of several other factions.  The FBI has an interest, the mob has an interest, De Niro’s ex-wife and family show up briefly, another bounty hunter is involved and the bail runner himself (an ex-mob accountant) clearly has some involvement.  The single-threaded plot moves forward at a good pace to bring all these factions together at various moments and then again for the finale.

There’s no overt slapstick here, the comic moments come from the story, characters and the dialog.  De Niro brings his usual weight to what could have been a pretty light role, adding depth and emotion to the main character.  The supporting cast is pretty good, and I enjoyed Yaphet Kotto as the main FBI agent.  The dialog between De Niro and Charles Grodin’s character (the ex-accountant) drives the story forward and makes up a good 50% of the on-screen action, so luckily it’s interesting and worth listening to.

Midnight Run is a better than average implementation of a common 80’s theme, standing above the others due in no small part to De Niro and the well written dialog.

Quantum of Solace

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I liked Casino Royale although I thought structurally it had issues.  I thought the new look for the Bond franchise was beyond necessary, it needed to step away from the cliche and it did that very successfully.  As a result, I was looking forward to QoS and I was a little concerned when I read a couple of negative reviews.  The first said that it crams too much action into a short space without time to breath and the second that there’s so much double crossing going on you have no idea where anyone stands.

Well let me tell you, if you’re a fan of action movies, spy based action movies, Bond, or just thrilling cinema, then you’ll probably enjoy Quantum.  It’s not perfect, but it gets the pace much better than Royale did, and it’s no-where near as complex.  A big issue I had with Royale was the need for so much exposition at the end to explain what had happened.  Quantum avoids that, it’s more contained and you’re left to draw your own conclusions about anything they don’t simply tell you which is a much more mature approach.

Quantum picks up immediately where Royale left off and the British Secret Service begins the journey of understanding the new organisation they have discovered.  There are surprises and twists at pretty much every stage although they’re not overwhelming.  The action does kick off right from the outset and the pace is solid, but there are moments to reflect and catch your breath.  Craig is superb as Bond once again, and the two main female characters are well played.  I won’t spoil the female leads, but will just say that they both bring something completely different to the story.

I had some minor quibbles with the plot (which I won’t spoil) but they’re truly small issues.  I liked the ‘bond-light’ approach, there’s no discussion of gadgets and the one or two used are really small elements, there’s no huge organisation supporting Bond where-ever he goes.  For a lot of the movie he’s on his own, for the usual reasons (he’s rebelling, it’s in his nature).

The only real complaint I have about the content apart from the minor plot issues, is that the bad guy packs no punch.  Ok, so the organisation he’s in is huge and scary and in control of the entire universe, but the guy himself just poses no threat in my mind’s eye.  He needed a steel rimmed hat or something, maybe steel teeth.

I do have another complaint about the direction for the action sequences, and that is that I didn’t enjoy the style.  The chase sequences are made up of super-fast cuts, super-shaky shots and usually cut against a backdrop of some other activity (horse race, opera).  It’s just a little too quick for me, I would have preferred more tight-camera work and steadier, longer shots.  It does however give you a huge sense of danger and pace, it’s just not my style.

Even with those last two issues, Quantum of Solace was an excellent movie experience, and as I said, if you’re a fan of the genre or Bond you’ll probably enjoy this a great deal.  For people who’ve never seen either, it’s a pretty good introduction (although without seeing Royale it won’t make as much sense).

Amazing John Williams tribute

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Originally found this over at the Topless Robot.  Turns out the video is just a guy lip-syncing to a song from these guys (he does it with their permission).  Here’s the link with full info.  The advantage of the video is that the youtube captions tell you which movies the music is from.

Note: This is not this guy singing, he’s just lip-syncing, but the song is awesome and the video makes it better.

Thanks!

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Just a quick thanks to Grete, who proof reads my posts and keeps me on the spelling straight and narrow 🙂 Thank you 🙂  You may notice spelling mistakes that go away a few hours after I post when Grete reads the articles!

She has a user account and can post entries as well, although she’s not felt the need to do so, so far, but if you see anything from her, don’t be surprised.

Movie link mashup roundup summary linksauce

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Random bunch of film updates,