Friday Is List Day, Again

Let’s try this again.

Random Ten:

  • Faith No More – “Evidence”
  • The Beta Band – “Troubles”
  • Led Zeppelin – “Bring it on Home”
  • The Secret Machines – “Sad and Lonely”
  • Propellerheads – “Take California”
  • Hotei, Tomoyasu – “Battle Without Honor or Humanity”
  • Pink Floyd – “Sheep”
  • Pearl Jam – “Present Tense”
  • MDFMK – “Get Out of My Head”
  • Audioslave – “Doesn’t Remind Me”

Video Games I’ve Played Recently:

  • Hitman: Blood Money – A lot of fun for a DIAS game. Of course, you have to figure out what you’re supposed to do first, and that’s not always easy. Seriously, how am I supposed to know that I need to put a sedative in the donut box in the caterer’s van because the caterer will take the donuts to the guys in the surveilance van, who will eat the donuts, pass out, and allow me to steal one of their suits, thus allowing me to enter the guarded house without arousing suspicions. Dammit, I can’t even describe it without taking 4 lines of text! Luckily, after you complete a few missions, you make enough money to stock up on weapons and ammo, thus allowing you to bypass all the sublte trickery in favor of just killing everyone. This actually has a lot of replay value, and I actually kinda like that you can fire the game up and just pick one of your favorite scenarios.
  • Half Life 2 and Half Life 2: Episode One: An excellent game, with lots of fun, action-packed sequences, but the story left me a little baffled. As it turns out, they’ve opted to continue the story with a series of “episodes,” but after playing Episode One (which came with the HL2 box I bought), I wasn’t too impressed. I got the same feeling about the storyline that I get from Lost and Heroes. The writers are just making it up as they go, with no real idea how they’re going to end the story (this Writers of Lost spoof sums up why I won’t watch that show again until I know there’s a good ending worth getting to). Anyway, storyline concerns aside, it’s still a fun game and I really enjoyed it.
  • Oblivion: A very interesting game. Sorta the Grand Theft Auto of RPGs. I’m not sure I love the FPS fighting system for using swords and other close-quarters combat, but the game is a blast because of it’s open-ended structure. Freedom of movement in the world, and lots of possible side-quests make this a true time-sink. Alas, not much time to play lately, so I haven’t gotten all that far.

Movies from the 2007 Philadelphia Film Festival I Definitely Want to See:

  • Exiled: I’m a fan of director Johnny To’s The Mission, but his other films are hit and miss (though I’ve only seen a few, and he’s quite prolific). Even still, I’m looking forward to this one, described as Johnny To’s homage to spaghetti westerns. Asian gansters get their own category in this year’s festival (instead of being lumped into “Danger After Dark” like last year) and there are a couple of other films in the series I’d like to see as well.
  • Severance: I discovered the emerging British horror scene during last year’s festival (I saw two excellent British horror films, The Descent and Evil Aliens), so I’m looking forward to this movie which is described as: BBC’s “The Office” re-imagined as a horror movie.
  • In the Shadow of the Moon: I admit it, I’m a sucker for space race films and documentaries. So a documentary boasting never-before seen footage of space along with humorous first-hand commentary is right up my alley.

I’m not sure how much time I’ll be able to devote to the Philly Film Festival this year, but I definitely want to see a few films, so expect some posts in early/mid April. I haven’t gone through the schedule in detail yet, but the above films jumped out at me (my initial impression is that this year isn’t as good as last year, but again, I haven’t gone through this stuff in enough detail).