Now Playing in Feb 2017

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Beaten

Super Mario Land 2 – read about it here.

Super Mario Bros 2 – read about it here.

Fire Emblem Heroes – Nintendo’s latest mobile game is the game that I was afraid they’d make since they announced they were doing mobile games. For the most part their FTP games have been fairly consumer friendly, from Mario Run’s pay once for the whole game policy to Pokémon Picross’s hard cap of $30 it will take from the player. Fire Emblem Heroes looks like a FTP game targeting big spending whales. That doesn’t really affect me, since I am not going to spend any money on this game. Still, with no money spent, I have managed to clear all but the last couple of stages on the hardest difficulty. It is Fire Emblem light, with a mix of your favorite characters from across the series. While there is considerable depth in the game’s skill system, the maps and battles are so simplified that it hardly matters. It isn’t a true Fire Emblem experience, but it is fun enough to pull out for 10 minutes during my lunch break. Still, while I might check in occasionally as new content drops, I am pretty will done with it at this point.

Ongoing

Terra Battle – After fiddling around with Fire Emblem Heroes for a week or two, I redownloaded this FTP game that I had some fun with last year. There is a lot to like in this game, with its appealing mix of puzzle and rpg gameplay and a very deep lore and effective world building. However, like most FTP gatcha games, the monetization elements really get in the way of actually enjoying in the gameplay. I mean, there is a fun game in here, but it is hard to find it through a lot of junk. I think I’m done with these free phone games for a while again, at least until Nintendo adds plenty of more content to Fire Emblem.

Hyrule Warriors –

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The combination of opportunity and hype for Breath of the Wild got me to spend some time with Hyrule Warriors. It is a Musuo game, sometimes those hit the spot but I have yet to play one that ends up being more than a middling experience. I only cleared the first four or five maps, but this is a lot of fun. There is a wide variety of playable characters and the game appears to be just full of Zelda fan service. I won’t be finishing this game anytime soon, since I am dumping it for Breath of the Wild as soon as I can, but I will come back to it.

Yakuza 0 –

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This seems to be the first Yakuza game that is becoming a hit here in the states and I am glad if this series is getting its long deserved recognition. I only played the first two chapters and this is more of what I absolutely loved about Yakuza 4 and 5. It has some minor improvements, but the games were already really good. I haven’t got far enough to really get into the game, but I expect I will love it when I finally do.

Dragon Quest VIII – I didn’t put as much time into this as I had hoped to. I just didn’t spend a lot of time with my 3DS and I let my brother take the cart for a week or two. I loved this game when I first played it more than a decade ago (? … !!!!!) and through the first half dozen or so hours it holds up. The loss of graphical fidelity hurts some. Dragon Quest VII isn’t the most complex game; a lot of its appeal is in its verisimilitude. It removes the abstractions of scale that many games have with their world map. DQ8 is mostly to scale. They kept that scale here, but the illusion doesn’t work as well when the game doesn’t look as good. Still, it is a solid game.

Super Mario Bros 3 – I started this and cleared the first couple of worlds. I should be done with it before too much longer; it is not a long game. Though the All-Stars version adds a save feature, the game was not designed with that in mind. I really haven’t changed my mind much about the game; it is absolutely one of the best games ever made.

Super Mario 64 – I skipped ahead a few games in my Mario series replay because as excellent as nearly all Mario games are, I needed a change of pace. Mario 64 is that change of pace. It has been a long time since I played it, long enough that many parts of the game don’t come completely natural to me like they do with Mario 3 or Mario World. Still, a lot of this game is purely iconic. I should be done with it not long after I finish Mario 3 and should have a post ready to go not much later.

Robotrek – I am progressing slowly, but I am still working on it. I will get this game beaten sooner rather than later.

Upcoming

Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – I couldn’t be more pumped for this. I’m getting it for WiiU, where it will make a fine farewell to a tragically overlooked console and likely be worth quite a bit of money down the road. This is likely to knock everything else on this list around, because I will be playing Zelda forever.

Super Mario World – I am skipping around just a bit to play Super Mario 64, but I will get to this sooner rather than later.

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island – After World, I will move on to this. Playing the GBA version on Virtual Console, as that is the only one available to me.

Lufia 2 & Terranigma – I will get to these last few SNES games, but they are on the back burner a little bit. I mean, Breath of the Wild.

Frustrated Hype

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There is no game coming out this year that I am more excited for than The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which I should have in my hands already and I’ll see you in a couple of years when I come up for breath. Hell, I don’t think I’ve been this excited for a game since the similarly delayed Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess a decade ago. Still, there is something in the early reactions that I find incredibly annoying. The game is getting the same kind of hype that helped contribute to me losing interest in Game of Thrones. Like with that TV/book series, much of Zelda’s early lauding is built on tearing down what came before it. As someone who has had a lot of fun with those games, it finds that turns me away more than it gets me interested. I doubt I will result in a clean break for me with Zelda like it did with A Song of Ice and Fire, at least partly because I still really like what Nintendo is putting out and partly because I like Zelda a lot more than I ever enjoyed George R R Martin’s work.

Today!

Today!

While its fans’ crapping on the rest of the genre wasn’t what turned me off to A Song of Ice and Fire, it did make it easier for to just decide to give up on the series. I dug into the series a year to two before A Feast for Crows came out and enjoyed it. Then A Feast for Crows hit and I found it rather underwhelming. When the promised second half didn’t show up the next year, or the year after, I kind of started to lose interest. At least, I did until it was announced that HBO was working on a TV adaptation. That sparked a reread and the realization that once the shock of the discovery was gone, I didn’t really like the books that much. That is the biggest reason I am not into the series anymore; it kept my interest through the rush of its twists and turns, but I didn’t like anything else about it.

What really didn’t help the situation were my online interactions with GoT fans. The primary method I’ve seen fans of the series use to build up it up is by tearing down other fantasy series. ASoIaF/GoT is better than Wheel of Time because it is so real. It is so dark and gritty, unlike all that other silly fantasy crap. Not only did I find these arguments unconvincing, it was also frustrating to see stuff I liked consistently put down by people hoping to push something that I really didn’t like. Being more realistic is not necessarily a positive thing in a fantasy series. Being dark and gritty is often just code for being cynical and pre-teen edgy. I am glad for fans of the series to have as faithful and successful an adaptation as Game of Thrones appears to be, but it success doesn’t render other similar series inferior.

That is the same feeling I am getting from some of Breath of the Wild’s hype. Nintendo is purposefully comparing their new Zelda to the original Legend of Zelda. That is fine, and it appears to have resulted in a truly excellent game. But that has morphed in many places to the full on tearing down of every Zelda game between the original and this new one. It is some baffling revisionist history, like there haven’t been at least three masterpieces in between. This is not true of everybody, many are careful to point out that while A Link to the Past didn’t have the original’s freedom it was still an excellent game, but most of the games are getting written off as misguided crap.

I never thought I would put myself into arguing against the original Legend of Zelda, but people vastly overstate the sense of ‘freedom’ in that game. It may have been one of my original gaming loves, but that game is a lot of opaque crap that has been wisely discarded. Getting past the Lost Hills or the Lost Woods is a cool trick once you know it, but it is understandably frustrating to anyone who doesn’t know how it works. Finding most of the secrets on the over world involves either already knowing where things are or painstakingly burning each bush or bombing likely walls. It isn’t fun; it is tedious. There is a lot to love about the game, but its relative openness is not the game’s biggest selling point.

Then there are the supposedly hyping comparisons to Skyrim, as though being a wide open janky piece of crap would be an improvement for the series. I know that I am the extreme outlier for my take on that game and Bethesda’s output in general, but what I’ve always liked more about Nintendo’s output over a lot of the open world crap that is dominating the current gaming landscape is that their games actually have well considered gameplay. I would rather Skyward Sword’s tightly designed, dense overworld to the wide open nothing that I see all over the place. From what I’ve seen of Breath of the Wild it appears to avoid the traps that nearly every other open world games fall into. Like Metal Gear Solid V, Breath of the Wild appears to still be a tightly designed game that is also an open world. As long as it still plays like Zelda, everything else is just gravy.

What annoys me is the hype that depends on putting something else down to make whatever is being hyped look good. You don’t have to tell me that the Wheel of Time is crap to try to convince me that A Song of Ice and Fire is good. Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword don’t have to be misbegotten junk to make Breath of the Wild a fresh experience. It can sell on its own merits; the other games in the series don’t need to be buried to build it up. Again, I am excited for Breath of the Wild as have been for a game in a long time, but that excitement has nothing to do with Skyward Sword, other than the fact that this game seems to be using a similar art design.

Super Mario Replay: Super Mario Bros 2

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I started and lost a version of this blog post and I don’t really feel much like rewriting it. Especially since I’ve already said just about all I have to say about the game in my 25 Years of NES entry on it. So this one is going to be short; just a few observations from my recent play through of the All-Stars version of the game.

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Super Mario Bros. 2 is a still great, and the All-Stars version just makes it better. It is already a game notable for being bright and colorful, this version just adds to that. There is just something so inviting about this game. It doesn’t have the game changing importance of the first game or Super Mario 64, nor is it as virtuosic a display of game design as Super Mario Bros 3, Super Mario World or Super Mario Galaxy, but Super Mario Bros 2 is one of the most pleasant games in the series to play. With the Mario series that is really saying something. Nearly all the games are pleasant, but this one stands out in that regard.

That’s it. Shortly it will be time for Super Mario Bros. 3, which might turn out to be as short as this one. It depends on how much I have to add to what I’ve already written about that game.

Unexpected Reflections

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When I was first contemplating beginning this blog, I set myself what I soon realized was a fanciful goal: I was going to write 100 posts to have in the bag before I ever started posting anything. That way, I could make a schedule and keep to it. I could write and post things as I finished them and when I got to a post day – the plan then was the same as it is now with post going up M/W/F – with nothing ready to go I could just dig into my backlog of 100 posts and have something right there. I soon realized that doing so was an unrealistic goal. Right now I barely but up 100 blog posts in a year, so it would have essentially meant holding off from starting the blog for a full year, which would have essentially meant never starting it. So then I used it as a bit of a guide, picking something off the list to write about when other inspiration failed me. At some point, I filed away the list in a folder and forgot about it. Now I’ve stumbled across it, half a decade a later and it is a bit like finding a time capsule. This list contains the things that I thought I wanted to write about in 2010. Some I have written about, some I still want to and some I wonder why I ever had them on the list.

Mixed in with childhood movie favorites, like Willow, and some of my favorite games, like Skies of Arcadia and Chrono Cross, are some truly baffling decisions. I apparently felt I had a lot to say about Tim Story’s Fantastic Four movies, which I think I like more than most but they don’t really inspire any strong feelings or thoughts in me. I thought I had an angle to write something about Chuck, a show I stopped watching midway through its second season which had been a couple of years before I made this list. Maybe I was going to write about why I gave up on the show; if that was it I can’t write it now, since I don’ remember anything about that show. I also had quite a few sports things to write on the list, but I don’t really care about sports, especially college sports which made up the bulk of the items, much anymore. I do need to check and see if I ever poster any of the blog posts I wrote about being a Royals fan, from one right after the wild card game to one after they lost the World Series to finally one after they won it the next year.

Skies of Arcadia's wild blue yonder

Skies of Arcadia’s wild blue yonder

A big one is A Song of Ice and Fire. When I made the list I was still among those eagerly awaiting A Dance With Dragons and the show had yet to premiere. The combination of a reread of the series and many tiresome conversations with fans of the show, as well as quite a few fans of the books, soured me on the whole series. What I would have written A Song of Ice and Fire then is very different than what I would write about it now. Is writing about it even still worth pursuing? I have endeavored to make my blog a generally positive place. I’ve never gotten much satisfaction from tearing something down. If I don’t like something, I’ll say that, but I am much more likely to just not write about things I don’t like rather than go out of my way to get mad at it. Still, sometimes putting a contrasting viewpoint out there is cathartic. I don’t have much nice to say about ASoIaF. I am happy that it has its fans and don’t begrudge them their enjoyment of it, but that is not the kind of fantasy I like.

That is another thing this list has brought to mind. I wanted to write about the pop culture that I loved as a child, the interests and experiences that shaped my youth and my tastes to this day. Somehow, though, I’ve managed to turn this blog into largely something more current. I spend a lot more time writing about new games and new movies that I watched recently instead of more formative experiences. The items on my list that fit the criteria of being a childhood favorite are the ones I am more likely to write about.

W...W...Willow you idioooot!

W…W…Willow you idioooot!

Right now, I am thinking of making a concerted effort to write those 100 blog posts I originally planned. I probably won’t change much else about how I do things, but now and then I will throw in an item or two from that rather diverse list. Once I’ve written about all 100, I think that would be a good time to close up shop here. Who knows? I like writing; despite the utter indifference that my meanderings here seem to inspire in people, I get enough out of them to continue doing them. But I am feeling a whole lot less eager to keep this up at the moment. So next week maybe you’ll see me finally put into words my indifference to the charms of Game of Thrones or maybe I will finally finish that long gestating exploration of morality in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Or maybe I will wax nostalgic about watching Willow on repeat. I don’t know.

The Great Wall Review

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The Great Wall is often impressive looking, usually exciting and always kind of dumb. The much of the plot doesn’t hold up to scrutiny and the character arcs are more haphazard lurching about than any real growth, but somehow the whole thing remains enjoyable anyway. A lot of that comes from the charisma of the two leads. There was much consternation about casting Matt Damon as the lead in this movie set in ancient China, but the finished product feels less about a white savior and more a somehow simultaneously heartfelt and cynical collaboration between East and West.

The Great Wall starts with a group of European mercenaries traveling East, hoping to find and steal the legendary explosive black powder. Chief among this group are William (Matt Damon), a highly skilled archer, and Tovar (Pedro Pascal). After a run in with some kind of green creature that kills their companions, they end up captured by The Nameless Order, an army that guards the Great Wall against the taotie, those green creatures that William and Tovar encountered. After witnessing a battle between the Nameless Order, including General Lin Mei, the two of them must decide if they want to help fight this inhuman menace or steal the black powder and hightail it back to Europe.

The CGI for the tao tei ranges from passable to just north of terrible, but in all other respects this movie looks amazing. The defenders of the wall wear color coded armor and fight in unison. The spectacle is often ridiculous, like the Crane Troop, who bungie jump from the wall to impale the charging monster with spears, but it always looks good. The acting is more hit or miss. It is one thing with the Chinese actors sounding stilted when speaking crazy dialogue in a second language, less understandable is Matt Damon’s inconsistent Irish (?) accent or Tovar’s over the top Spanish patois. The fighting itself is often a touch perfunctory, with a lot of crazy strategies shown before most the killing happens behind a fog

The movie occasionally reaches the heights it aspires to, when all sense falls away and the nonsense transports the viewer to this fantasy version of China. It happens when watching the workings of The Great Wall, as well as when the mount everyone on hot air balloons. It also works well when Damon lightens up a little, like when William and Tovar banter. There is an ideological through line, with the thoroughly selfish William, a soldier since childhood who has fought for and against everyone, learning to trust in something bigger than just himself.

There is a touch of that white savior narrative, but the movie wisely steps back from it several times. William does do incredible things, he is a skilled archer, but the bigger hero moments are mostly taken by the members of the Nameless Order. He did kill one of the tao tie by himself at the start of the movie, but it is soon discovered that he only managed to do so because he carried a magnet, which throws off the beasts hive mind. While William is integral to several battles, Lin Mei is the one who comes out looking like a hero.

That is kind of why I see this movie as being a genuine attempt to make a movie that crosses the East West divide. There is certainly some cynicism there, just look at Stephen Chow’s recent efforts. The Mermaid grossed over 500 million dollars in China, but couldn’t even get a real theatrical release in the USA. But if it had a big time American star to put on the poster, like Matt Damon, then I am sure we would have had the chance to see it. That cynicism aside, I believe that Legendary Pictures, as well as director Zhang Yimou and the cast, were genuinely trying to make a blockbuster that was as appealing to China as it was to America and vice versa. I think they mostly succeeded. This is not a movie about the white guy showing up to show the Chinese how it’s done, is more about a white guy showing up and learning how the Chinese do it. William ends up looking heroic, but no more than Lin Mei or strategist Wang.

The Great Wall is a flawed, frequently dumb movie that isn’t quite ready to have fun with its insanity. It is not a going to be remembered among the great fantasy films, but it is enjoyable enough for what it is.

***

Super Mario Replay: Super Mario Land 2

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Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins is not especially good. This really hurts to admit; it was one of the few worthwhile Gameboy games I owned for the first few years that I owned that machine. Playing it now, it is hard to deny that it is only passable because most Gameboy platformers are simply crap. It does improve on a lot of things from its predecessor, but many of those improvements come with drawbacks that make it hard to definitively say that it is the better game.

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Super Mario Land 2 is certainly a better looking game than its predecessor. Mario looks more like the Mario from Super Mario World, which came out the year before, and each of the games six worlds is bursting with personality. It is also a bigger game than the first Gameboy outing, with 32 stages compared to the firsts 12. And all of those stages are platform stages, no weird shooter segments this time. There is more of that genuine Mario feel, with everything being on model, fire flowers instead of superball and no exploding koopas.

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It does suffer in how it plays, though. The bigger, better looking Mario takes up a lot more of the screen real estate, meaning that the player can see less of the level. It is a problem common to Gameboy platformers, leading to too many blind jumps and cheap hits. The game also feels a little floaty. The edges of enemies and platforms are not particularly clear, again leading to cheap hits. It might be the worst playing Mario game that Nintendo ever made.

The game did give the Mario series Wario, the perfect secondary antagonist for the series. It isn’t like Evil Mario is the most original idea ever, but Wario as he evolved after this game is great. He was good enough here that he promptly took over the Gameboy series from Mario. The next game was Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3. Though it is called Super Mario Land 3, I am considering it a Wario game and including it in my Super Mario Replay.

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Super Mario Land 2 is a game that means a whole lot to me. I played it so many times on cross country trips, as my family drove from western Missouri to Indiana every summer to visit relatives. I know the ins and outs of this game like no other game in the Mario series. Still, playing it now, with fresh eyes, it is hard not to notice its shortcomings. It is certainly an ambitious game, there are few Gameboy games that look better. But like most GB games of its ilk, it is a pale shadow of the home console games of the same time. It is trying its hardest to be portable Super Mario World, but that just isn’t possible on the Game Boy. I can’t say that it isn’t a worthwhile addition to the series, but it certainly isn’t the best.

LEGO Batman Review

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Anyone who saw The LEGO Movie surely remembers its delightfully egocentric take on that most famous superhero. LEGO Batman, as the title should make more than obvious, is more of the same that focuses primarily on him. It works and it moves fast enough that the few parts that don’t work go by so fast that it is easy to forget them.

LEGO Batman starts with a bang. All of Batman’s rogue gallery, from the Joker to Bane to Condiment King, team up to destroy Gotham City. They are defeated, of course, by Batman to a song he rapped himself. After that we get to see how Batman functions, or fails to function, as Bruce Wayne when Alfred forces him to attend Commissioner Gordon’s retirement party. It then proceeds to do some of the best renditions of classic Batman characters ever seen in a movie. Batman accidently agrees to adopt eager young orphan Dick Grayson and immediately falls in love with Gordon’s replacement: his daughter Barbara, only to be put off by her somewhat anti-Batman stance on crime fighting. Meanwhile, the Joker, fed up with working the other incompetents in Batman’s rogue gallery, devises a plan to prove to Batman that they are true nemeses.

I don’t think the movie does a great job with any of Batman’s villains other than Joker, whom Zack Gallifinakis plays as a woman scorned, jealous of Batman fighting around when he’s got the perfect villain right there. However, that is more than offset by how well it does with his supporting cast. Alfred is wonderful, as is the eternally upbeat Robin. While I am not a fan of making Batman and Batgirl a couple (It was a bad idea in the movie adaptation of Killing Joke, it is a bad idea here) the version of Barbara Gordon here is new and entertaining. I do wish the movie had spent a little more time with the superhero stuff; Batman’s villains get pushed aside rather quickly for the likes of Voldemort and the Eye of Sauron and the other superheroes only show up during a brief excursion to Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. But that is me letting the comic fan in me ignore what actually makes a good and accessible movie.

While LEGO Batman doesn’t go to the lengths that The LEGO Movie did to mess with the idea of these Legos actually being toys, it does have its own meta-narrative, one that is more interesting than the somewhat rote joke delivery vehicle that is the plot of this movie. From the beginning, LEGO Batman is having a conversation with previous movie versions of Batman. There are references to how Superman is now his greatest enemy and call backs to the Burton movies. The one that most frequently gets singled out is Batman 66. At first that Adam West version of Batman is held up for ridicule, dismissed by Batman. But with the reluctant addition of Robin to his crime fighting, the 60’s Batman starts to become more and more relevant. It really works, though I don’t know that Batman ’66 really needs vindication, especially not in the eyes of anyone paying money to see LEGO Batman.

LEGO Batman is really good. It is a comedy that is suitable for children but isn’t insulting to adults, a tricky balance that only Pixar seems to nail every time out. It isn’t an especially deep movie, but it is a fun distraction that is sure to be a favorite of children and parents for years to come.

****

John Wick Chapter 2

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jwc2

The first John Wick movie was a very well executed piece of pulp. It was a stripped down, lean revenge movie with excellent action sequences and some nice bits of humor. This follow up loses a lot of the humor, but comes back strong in every other regard, fleshing out the world that first movie only hinted at and doing its best to outdo that movies already terrific action. I don’t know that it quite succeeds in being better than the first movie, but if it’s not it is really close.

John Wick Chapter 2 picks up soon after the last movie left off. Once Wick (Keanu Reeves) has gotten revenge for the murder of his puppy, he sets out to retrieve the car that was stolen from him at the same time. Once that little detail is taken care of, he returns home with his new dog to resettle into retired life, only to find another link to his time as a hitman coming back in the form of Santino D’Antonio. Wick owes him a blood debt and since Santino has heard that Wick is out of retirement, he’s decided to cash in. After some convincing, Wick takes on the mission and the movie is off and going.

The movie does a lot of more to flesh out the intricate underworld that the first movie hinted at with its Continental hotel that caters to assassins and everyone pays in gold. The rules that they all live by, most importantly that no business is to be done on Continental grounds, are fleshed out and made more clear. It does this not through rote or dull dialogue, but by having Wick take advantage of the services provided and oblique conversations that mention new concepts. It gives the viewer just enough to understand the plot and to give the feeling that there is more going on in this world than is immediately apparent. The best little Continental interlude is easily Wick’s visit to the sommelier, who instead of dispensing wines he helps match customers to the proper weapons. It is one of the few scenes that keep the first film’s sense of humor.

Where the film truly shines is its actions scenes. Few movies have actions scenes as well choreographed and realized as the John Wick movies. Much of the thanks goes to Keanu Reeves, who is able to do the extended takes that many of the action scenes here feature. Unlike many choppy action movies, John Wick’s fight scenes are frequently smooth takes that go on much longer than most and zoom out further to give the viewer a better view of scene rather than closer to hide how much of it isn’t really happening. It helps that whoever staged the action did simply an incredible job. The action is as good as it gets and that is why you are coming. It is worth mentioning, though, that the fights have incredibly graphic violence, so those with an aversion to blood or unspeakable things done with a pencil might want to think long and hard before watching this.

The film’s storytelling economy that reveals its world is also put to good use introducing characters, especially since the bulk of the characters from the last movie didn’t make it out alive. John Wick Chapter 2 introduces some rival assassins in Common’s Cassian and Ruby Rose’s Ares, both of which are given fairly full sketches with only small amounts of screen time. It also introduces Laurence Fishbourne as some sort of homeless king in a fun cameo, as well as maximizing the time to the returning Ian McShane and Lance Reddick.

The title character changes the most in this second film, or more accurately our perception of him changes the most. In the first he was a retired assassin out for revenge, now he is an assassin out of retirement. Before it was kind of fun, this time it is more sad. There is no escape for John Wick, and when there is an escape he seems incapable of taking it. It changes him from a driven, talented man out for revenge to a very sad man with a death wish. He could walk away, he should walk away but what does he have to walk away to? This movie systematically strips the few things he had after the last movie away from him, leaving him with nothing.

While it is something of a downer, it is still an excellent film. It is the Empire Strikes Back to the first John Wick’s Star Wars. With a third movie already announced on the way let’s hope there is a satisfying next chapter in this tale.

****1/2

What I Read in January 2017

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I made my goal of five books this month, including one that I have been working on for more than four months. I complemented that with a half dozen or so comic collections, but I don’t really have anything to say about them. I am currently reading about four different books, including finally getting starting on my reading project for this year: reading all of Charles Dickens’ novels. I’ve already read quite a few of them, but it has been a long time for most and I might go back to them as a refresher. I am about a quarter of the way through Pickwick Papers. I didn’t read anything nearly so impressive in January, though.

gits

Girl in the Shadows

Gwenda Bond

I read the first book in Bond’s series about the circus, Girl on a Wire, and enjoyed it. Not as much as I enjoyed her Lois Lane books, but it seemed unlikely that I would with no prior affection for it. This sequel changes the focus from high wire acts to a stage magic and also increases the amount of real magic in the series. The first book had a magic coin that gave the person holding it luck; this creates a whole society of real magicians. The central story is along the same lines as the last book, with a young performer out to prove herself on the stage. Moira, the protagonist, runs away from her restrictive father to join a traveling circus as a stage magician. She soon learns that she can do more than just stage magic, as well as a host of family secrets. She is aided by a boy she meets at the circus and a romance is soon kindled. It works, though I found it less engaging than the first volume.

tdbds

The Demon’s Brood

Desmond Seward

I am very conflicted on this book. It is an enthralling read, but it is very selective about the history it portrays. While reading this overview of the Plantaganet Dynasty of England, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Seward was deliberately including the most shocking and graphic stories of the era, even those that as far as I know have largely been discredited by historians. It all becomes clear near the end, when the writer makes a plea that these older Kings to replace the Tudors for dramatic portrayals, possibly to get some of that sweet Game of Thrones money. He’s not wrong, but it does color what does and does make this already stretched thin book. Less appealing are the writer’s reflections on the quality of each king, weighted heavily in favor of their martial prowess over anything else.

While it can be sensational, The Demon’s Brood does give a good overview of a dozen or so Kings. Even those with a passing knowledge of English history, or Shakespeare in my case, will learn a lot from this book and it is a very easy read. It is certainly nowhere near a comprehensive look at any of these figures, and it all but leaves out some rather important people like Eleanor of Aquitaine, but it definitely worth a look.

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A Man of Some Repute

Elizabeth Edmondson

This is supposedly a mystery, but while Edmondson does a lot of work to set up her fairly enjoyable cast of characters, the mystery part frequently gets lost in the shuffle. The personal problems and post-WWII period details are all fine, the book absolutely doesn’t work as a mystery. I do like the characters, but the book slow plays just about everything about them. It sets up a lot of directions things could go for Hugo, Georgina and Freya, but doesn’t give them a lot to do.

Recently injured and forcibly retired from his intelligence work, Hugo moves to Selchester with his younger sister Georgina. There they meet Freya, the niece of the old Earl who went missing seven years before. Soon after they arrive, the Earl’s body is found on the premises of Selchester castle, kicking off a very relaxed investigation. I didn’t hate the book, I liked it enough to pretty much immediately read its sequel, but I wasn’t overly enthralled.

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A Question of Inheritance

Elizabeth Edmondson

This is the sequel to A Man of Some Repute. Again, this feels like a slow playing of everything. It does have a stronger mystery, but otherwise is pretty much the same as the previous book. Or what I assume is the previous book, because this one doesn’t exactly pick up where the last left off. This one starts with a new Earl of Selchester moving into the castle with his two daughters. Unfortunately, this unknown American taking the seat is not welcome news to everyone and someone appears to want him dead. When a guest turns up dead at the castle, Hugo and Freya set to work again sorting things out.

This one does feel more like a classic mystery, though that mystery plot still gets sidelined for way too long at certain points. It also delves more deeply into Hugo’s spy past, a turn that could be interesting, but this only barely starts to make it good. It is like a couple of chapters of a spy novel fit into this rather domestic book. I don’t think this series has been very good, but they are still largely pleasant reads.

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Republic of Thieves

Scott Lynch

I really enjoyed the first two of Lynch’s Locke Lamora books, but it took me a long time to warm up to this one. It doesn’t help that things don’t really get going until more than halfway through the book. It isn’t that the first half is unenjoyable, but it is very low stakes. A lot of it is focused on cleaning up loose ends from the previous book, which left this series’ anti-heroes in somewhat dire straits. After that, Locke and Jean are engaged in a political game between rival wizard factions to throw the results of a coming election. That is the real problem: the stakes feel very small compared to the two previous books. This one is largely a dive into the relationship between Locke and Sabetha, as she is leading the other party in this contest. That stuff works, but it doesn’t really feel like the protagonists have any direction or goals for most of the book. They take the job because that is literally the only choice and they have no skin in the game, as long as they play by the rules.

Lynch has created a great cast of characters. Characters like the Sanza twins, who only appear in the flashbacks but continue to get more and more fleshed out, making their lack in the present chapters strongly felt. Locke and Jean, and Sabetha for that matter, are all great. I am happy to just read more of their adventures, but I hope that going forward they have a little more at stake.

La La Land Review

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I had given up on seeing La La Land at a theater. While my local cinema had posters up for it for a while, they disappeared about two weeks ago. They pulled the same trick early in 2016 when they had coming soon posters up for The Nice Guys, which they never showed and consequently I never got to see on the big screen. But, miracle of miracles, it finally showed up last weekend. It is just as good as everyone says it is. La La Land is an inspiring romance

The movie stars Emma Stone as Mia, an aspiring actress working as a barista at the Warner Bros studio lot. She is cajoled into attending a party with her three roommates, which goes badly and her car gets towed. On her trek back home she wanders into the restaurant where Ryan Gosling’s Sebastian is playing piano. Despite some initial friction, they soon hit it off, with Seb sharing his love of jazz and Mia her love of old Hollywood movies. Both of them, however, remain unable to fulfill their dreams. Mia keeps getting auditions for lackluster parts and Seb is unable to pull together the funds to open up his desired jazz club. So when an old friend offers Seb a chance to play keyboard for his band, Seb takes him up despite not really liking the music. Meanwhile, Mia writes and performs a one woman show.

The plot is enjoyable, with a lot to say about performance and creation that I need to see it again to really unravel, but it is a secondary draw to the music. La La Land is a musical; a very enjoyable one. The opening number, with dozens of dancers breaking out in an impromptu performance on during a traffic jam on the highway is a sight. Tons of performers doing impressive routines all in one take. Amazingly, as good as that first song is it only gets better from there. There is the completely delightful “A Lovely Night” with the movie’s two stars beginning an infinitely charming romance during a song that starts with them complaining about each other. After a couple of complete showstoppers, “City of Stars” and “Audition”, it winds up with “Epilogue” a bittersweet look at what might have been.

That is what makes La La Land so amazing. It is a love story, among other things, that while it doesn’t end quite where you might expect, it is still a mostly happy ending. It is certainly not a traditional ending. That is the movie. Both Seb and Mia are fans of things that have long passed. The Hollywood that Mia loves doesn’t really exist anymore and the jazz that Seb idolizes is a fading genre of music. Much like how this movie is a throwback to old-styled Hollywood musicals. La La Land argues that it is important to remember the past, but not to be constrained by it. It is perfectly fine to love old movies or traditional jazz, but you can’t let that hold you back from change. There are certainly elements of that old thing that can be brought forward, like the musical genre itself, but maybe all of its genre trappings don’t need to be preserved. Does a romance have to end a certain way to be happy?

La La Land is a cut above most movies I see and review here. I tend toward populist genre fair. Honestly, that is what La La Land is, except its genre is not one that has shown that popular appeal recently. I don’t see how something like La La Land wouldn’t be pleasing to the majority of movie goers. It is utterly charming and uplifting.

*****