Random Babblings

I Am Legend an adaptation of the novel by Richard Matheson, staring Will Smith. I say adaptation and not “based on” since the story line is quite changed. Getting away from that it was quite a good film.

Not having much to do today, Lisa and I headed out to the movies. We had discussed seeing this when it was released but events and timing got in the way, so we held off till this vacation week. Despite some negative commentary from folks at Lisa’s work, we’re glad we went and saw this.

When we first saw the previews we didn’t know what to expect, they didn’t reveal much of the plot, just that Will Smith was the only survivor of some catastrophe. Then as more commercials and previews came out we thought it was a Zombie movie. A little digging into the history of the original novel said Vampire. Neither of these are quite true, but the disease in the movie is portrayed as a little of both. Despite the horror/suspense genre not being our normal cup of tea, both Lisa and I wanted to see this movie. For Lisa at least there was some drool factor in Will Smith, but the concept of such an actor doing essentially a “one man show” was a good draw as well.

This movie could have been an effects fest, and probably many people went in expecting it. In the end the movie is all about the story, the story about the “last man” on earth and how he has survived, and how such solitude takes it’s toll. Will Smith manages to pull off a remarkable portrayal of a man fighting to save the world while at the same time fighting to save himself.

When you go to see this remember to turn off that blockbuster mentality. This movie is not meant to be that despite it’s budget. Instead, go in ready to care about the characters of this movie, because it’s hard not to.

Overall 4/5.

An evening of games at Duane & Steve’s was started (after an abortive attempt at Pinochle) with the gem known as Space Shuffle.

We cracked open the box, opened the deck of cards and immediately started shuffling, after all it is the name of the game. Duane tells us to stop as we missed the player ”

Two solar systems immediately take shape, and play progresses smoothly. A mostly yellow solar system (no player) and a mostly green solar system (me of course) shape up nicely, and purple cards (Steve) are nowhere to be seen. Steve makes a comment to the effect of “I think I hate this game”, my response is “I know who else hates this game… the scorekeeper”. To which Duane responds “watch it or that’ll be you”.

The score keeping in this game truly is tedious, and a few times people got too into the grove of playing for Duane to keep up on the score keeping duties. The game proceeds ok for the most part, the first solar system closed is a solid blue one. We continue toward the end, and as we are playing out the last cards in our hand, I get to play 3 cars in a row to end the game. Still wasn’t enough to win the game. Scores are scattered between 170 and 120.

Overall a run of the mill card game, I won’t be suggesting it any time soon.

Ashes of Victory. Not having review any of the other books here I’ll go into some more general feeling of the series. As I had said, fantasy had been my forte for a while but I wanted a change of pace. The Honor Harrington series has been that for the most part. While I’m not known for stopping the reading of a book because I don’t like it, I have no problems stopping reading a series, so the fact that I’m up to book nine says something.

The Honorverse as it is called is a series of Science Fiction war stories, mostly space battles, but the political and individual stories that go behind them as well. The main character is Honor Harrington a commander in the Royal Manticoran Space Navy. The series mostly follows her progression though the war, and her rise through her birth nation and a local allied nations navies.

By Ashes of Victory, Honor is an Admiral in the RMN and due to some injuries sustained in the previous books is working as an instructor at the navies Officer School. This represented a great shift in the series. For the first time 90% of the action of the book does not involve the lead character. To that point over half of the book doesn’t even include her. Even further the list of “lead” characters is somewhat long.

I don’t usually have a problem with multi-lead books, but this time I did. I’m not sure if it was a sense of disconnect, for eight books we’ve had one lead character with the occasional aside for some other characters or other settings. Now we have the traditional multiple leads, and switch perspective between them every chapter or so. I think one of the problems, is that some of these characters just weren’t strong enough. Most of these new “leads” were the supporting role characters that we’ve seen and heard from every now and then, but their personalities weren’t strengthened into lead characters. Not enough to turn me off, but enough to reduce my enthusiasm for the book.

Overall I’d rate this as a 3/5. For the moment though I’m going to set aside the series, but I’ll be back soon.

Next up: Hinterland: Book Two of the Godslayer Chronicles

Guitar Hero 3. I’d been trying to pick this puppy up for a week or so. Been hard to find in the stores. Thankfully I had a half day on Friday and I took the opportunity to go looking for a copy. Glad I did, because the one store said they didn’t expect any till the 26th, and the store I found it at was the last copy they had.

It’s something of a funny story about my desire for this game. It started many, many moons ago at a FLGS named Tower of Games. I was there of course to play board games, but they had a Wii and a PS2 setup on one wall, and the guitar hanging next to them. My friend Jim was there and mentioned that he owned it. So I gave it a whirl, Jim gave me a few pointer along the way, but one thing was pretty clear… I sucked. I probably played or about half an hour, and set it aside. There was an interest there, but it was a $80 game for a system that I didn’t own. Yes there is a PS2 in the house, but that’s Staci’s, so it never became too much of an issue for me.

Then the fateful day came that they announced GH3, for the XBox 360, the PS3, and the Wii. And that little niggle that had been in the back of my skull kicked in. I never quite obsessed about it, but the desire was there. I talked to Jim about it, sure enough he was getting it and also for the Wii. And GH3 was going to add network play.

Fast forward a little while and I come home one day to a GH2 box sitting in my den. Seems Elise had borrowed it for a little while. I ignored it for a few days, but then one day, home alone, I played it again. And I still sucked, but only at first. I was slowly getting better and getting into the groove. By the time it went back, I had probably played the game more than Elise.

So back to this weekend. I’ve gotten pretty good at the game. I’ve already finished on easy, need to go back and 5-star a few songs, and I’m making progress on medium. I doubt I’ll finish on hard for a good long while, and expert is probably completely out.

Ashes of Victory is the 9th book in David Webber‘s Honor Harrington series. I started reading this series earlier this year as a change of pace. I mainly read fantasy, Jordan, Martin, etc, etc… And since I read a lot I tend to see lots of similarities between books. I had kinda hit the rut of reluctant boy hero finds out he has great powers and has to save the world. Not all of the books I’ve read are that story, and sometimes it’s changed up (reluctant girl hero), but I wanted something that was completely different, and would last me a while.

So I plowed through the science fiction titles of the local book store and landed on Webber. I had heard of him before but being into fantasy more than SciFi had kinda passed him over. I’m not sure that I completely escaped the rut. Honor is still a reluctant hero, though perhaps that’s not quite fair. The series is a SciFi Space Military drama, and I’m sure most commanders in the military accept possible hero status at least a little reluctantly. Sure some revel in the power, but I guess they wouldn’t make interesting enough characters to last as long as this series has.

So that gets back to the fantasy. Are the heroes reluctant because they have to be? Do power hungry heroes just not work, does it just turn them into villains. Maybe I just need to read more anti-hero novels, not that I have any desire to read Thomas Covenant.

In the end, I’ve enjoyed this series, and will probably try and read more SciFi in the future, but perhaps I’ve realized to take the stories for what they are.