Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous is, of course, the sequel to Miss Congeniality and stars Sandra Bullock, Regina King, Enrique Murciano, Diedrach Bader, Heather Burns, William Shatner, and Nick Offerman. The best part of it was watching it with Kai, because he hated it and it was funny.
We pick up three weeks after the events of Miss Congeniality. Gracie (Bullock) has become a minor celeb - she was, after all, a finalist for Miss USA and stopped a terrorist plot - but that fame gets in the way of her career. Faced with a choice between a desk job and a new position as the "face" of the FBI, and reeling from a sudden breakup with her boyfriend Matthews (Benjamin Bratt in the first movie, but he's not in this one at all except as a way to flunk the Bechdel), Hart goes with the latter. She's teamed up with the style specialist named Joel (Bader) and at that point, I thought we were going to get a whole movie of her learning to be fabulous, which would be a retread of the first one.
But no, instead, we cut to ten months later. Hart is going on talk shows and talking about the FBI. She's (ghost)written a book about her life, and exceptionally violent co-FBI Sam Fuller (King) is pressed into service as her assistant. And then her buddy Miss USA Cheryl Frasier (Burns) and...Miss USA Pageant MC Stan Fields (Shatner) who apparently tours with Miss USA?...never mind. They're kidnapped by a pre-Parks & Rec Nick Offerman, and Hart and Fuller get assigned to press duty. Hart, though, goes off script, starts doing her real job again, and foils the bad guys.
So, the bit of this that Kai hated was that Gracie embraced the shallow, fashion/beauty obsessed side of herself and completely lost her hard edge for most of the movie. I think this movie actually has some things going for it - it's not a complete retread of the first movie, which is always a plus. Bullock is, as usual, charming and funny. Poor Murciano is also funny as the overly-earnest agent completely in love with his (as it happens) unfaithful girlfriend (Elisabeth Rohm in one of her earliest film appearances).
I wasn't crazy about King's character. I like the notion that a comedy starring women could be a buddy movie rather than a rom-com, but Fuller is kinda one-note (seemed to be a scripting issue more than a performance issue). Plus, "angry black woman" hits some uncomfortable notes as presented (particularly since Bullock mocks her dialect a couple of times, which is Not Cool).
Anyway, it's funny in places but it's not as good as the first one and it's pretty vapid all things considered.
My Grade: C
Rewatch Value: Low
Next up: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
Thursday, October 12, 2017
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
Blades in the Dark: Choices, Choices
Monday was Blades in the Dark and I want to do this writeup before tonight when I run Night's Black Agents and get too far behind on game writeups and like drown in a sea of them AAAAAAAA EGG.
Ahem.
Another fine "day" in Duskwall. One Eye is talking with Jul, a blood dealer. He tells her something interesting - Dundridge & Sons, the famous tailors in Nightmarket, bought some blood from him for treating the fabric of a new cloak made on commission. He's not sure who commissioned it, but it it's got alchemical treatments in it, it's for someone with money and someone with mystical or spiritual concerns. In addition, stealing said cloak would give the thieves a great deal of bargaining power or just something cool to fence. One Eye is skeptical (what's Jul getting out of this, after all?).
Meanwhile, Copper is heading to the track and hails a carriage. The driver turns out to be Grull, a known scoundrel himself. Knowing that the Widdershins gang has reputation for smuggling weird shit, he mentions that he's got a line on someone who would pay well for some eggs from the deathseeker crows that the Spirit Wardens breed. Time isn't really a factor, but they'd need to be delivered to Grull quickly after theft. He drops Copper off at the track, where her dog comes in third.
Also in a carriage is Cage, but a carriage of a different sort - the Bluecoats picked him up. Captain Vale talks to him, and says she feels kind of bad that Widdershins is on the outs with the Gondoliers. Cage presses and she admits that really, she's afraid the gang will start blowing up roads next, and she uses those roads. She tells him that a Gondolier named Strain went missing, and his boat was found washed up in the Docks. If someone were to find out what happened to Strain, probably the Gondoliers would be happy about it.
The gang meets up at the lair later on to discuss their options. They figure the cloak isn't a great choice; there's no immediate promise of money and they don't really trust that Jul isn't feeding them bad intel. The egg-theft sounds like a good heist, but it involves stealing from the Spirit Wardens (who are already not fans of the crew) and from the Belleweather Crematorium, no less - spirit guards, human security with sparkcraft weapons, plus the crew would need to keep it very quiet so they don't wind up going to war with the Wardens. Cage, in particular, isn't a fan of this - he's a former Warden and knows what they're capable of.
They decide that although they might not make money off it, investigating the disappearance of Strain would be a good way to mend some fences with the Gondoliers. Plus, his boat washed up by the docks, meaning the leviathan hunters probably know something and they're friendly with the crew. They head down to the Docks to ask around.
Siren talks to Noggs, a former shipmate (she's a former leviathan hunter, remember) and Noggs appears willing to talk, but not here. She arranges to meet him for a drink later. One Eye goes to Ink Lane and finds a tattoo artist who is hurting for business. She talks to him about the prospect of a hallucinogenic tattoo, and learns that he put a tattoo on a Gondolier some days back - a warding glyph - but messed it up because the Gondolier didn't tell him that he'd put blood in the ink he supplied. Apparently word had gotten out and they were blaming him. One Eye promised to trade information and try and spread the word that this hadn't been his fault, if he'd help them out, so he drew a sketch of the glyph for her.
Copper wandered through the Menagerie, and found a cage with a weird striped wolf-thing. Captain Rye, the proprietor, tells her it was given to him by a sailor, who called it a "devil wolf" - they used it to kill rats on their ship, but it's hellish fast. Copper, in love, runs off to One Eye and gets her to loan her a coin to buy it (some haggling occurs). She buys the wolf and puts it on a leash.
Siren meets with Noggs, but when he's about to talk, he glances over her shoulder, gets spooked, makes an excuse and leaves. Cage, meanwhile, goes out to where folks sell cheap goods on the Docks, and tries to attune to the spiritual madness in the area, narrowing down what might have happened to Strain. He gets lost in it, though, and winds up wading into the water as the others walk toward him. Siren notices something slithering towards him, and shoots it.
That snaps him out of the reverie and he tries to grab the thing in front of him (thinking maybe it's a ghost), but it wraps tentacles around him and tries to drag him under. Copper, struggling to control her new doggie, rips the monster off him and tosses it back into the drink, and they stagger up on land ("I thought they stayed out at sea!" says Copper. "That was a baby," says Siren. "That's why we don't go in the water.").
The crew confers, and they figure that Strain must have known something was coming. Cage looks at the sketch, but isn't sure what it means - he's a got a hookup, though. Since Strain brought blood to the tattooist, One Eye figures that she'll check in with Jul. Siren and Copper decide to look around and see if they can find out where his boat went.
One Eye heads back to Brightmarket, breaks into Jul's workshop, and rigs it up so that with a flick of a switch she can ruin his supply or spray him with toxic leviathan blood. When he gets back, she threatens him, so he talks - he didn't sell Strain the blood (he doesn't work the Docks), but he heard that a colleague did. Mixing blood into a warding glyph means that you're trying to ward of a particular person or, if the blood is alchemically treated, that some powerful magic is going on, which is what Jul suspects was happening. He has never met Strain, though, and doesn't know what happened there.
Copper and Siren find where the boat washed up, and Copper asks around (loudly) until she learns that a captain named Laudis took it to turn into a lifeboat. They find Laudis' ship and talk with the captain, who tells them that when he found the boat, it was washed up on the shore. Based on when he found it, the boat must have been out in the bay, which is too far from shore for a Gondolier's boat. He found no blood on the boat, just a bunch of broken glass (which he didn't keep). He figures something slithered up out of the sea and dragged Strain down. Laudis also reveals that he lost his left hand (now replaced with a wicked-looking pronged prosthetic) at the blade of the captain of the ship Siren used to crew, so that tenses things up a bit.
Cage talks to Flint, his buddy who traffics in spirits. Flint guesses that, based on the glyph, either Strain was trying to protect himself from something specific and personal or he was taking spirit traffic work on the side. Cage brings Flint back to the lair to have a seance - if Strain is dead, maybe they can summon him (unless he's in a bottle somewhere).
Back at the lair, Cage and Flint (and the others) call up Strain, and see him in the scrying pool, but realize he's still alive. Copper attunes herself a little more closely than she should, and hears the ocean. The shadows make her think she's under something - a bridge, maybe? Also she feels pain on her chest, like her skin is itching.
The crew figures that they know enough to go and find Strain - he got himself into some kind of trouble, and needs rescue. And if that results in a reward from the Gondoliers, well, so be it.
Ahem.
Another fine "day" in Duskwall. One Eye is talking with Jul, a blood dealer. He tells her something interesting - Dundridge & Sons, the famous tailors in Nightmarket, bought some blood from him for treating the fabric of a new cloak made on commission. He's not sure who commissioned it, but it it's got alchemical treatments in it, it's for someone with money and someone with mystical or spiritual concerns. In addition, stealing said cloak would give the thieves a great deal of bargaining power or just something cool to fence. One Eye is skeptical (what's Jul getting out of this, after all?).
Meanwhile, Copper is heading to the track and hails a carriage. The driver turns out to be Grull, a known scoundrel himself. Knowing that the Widdershins gang has reputation for smuggling weird shit, he mentions that he's got a line on someone who would pay well for some eggs from the deathseeker crows that the Spirit Wardens breed. Time isn't really a factor, but they'd need to be delivered to Grull quickly after theft. He drops Copper off at the track, where her dog comes in third.
Also in a carriage is Cage, but a carriage of a different sort - the Bluecoats picked him up. Captain Vale talks to him, and says she feels kind of bad that Widdershins is on the outs with the Gondoliers. Cage presses and she admits that really, she's afraid the gang will start blowing up roads next, and she uses those roads. She tells him that a Gondolier named Strain went missing, and his boat was found washed up in the Docks. If someone were to find out what happened to Strain, probably the Gondoliers would be happy about it.
The gang meets up at the lair later on to discuss their options. They figure the cloak isn't a great choice; there's no immediate promise of money and they don't really trust that Jul isn't feeding them bad intel. The egg-theft sounds like a good heist, but it involves stealing from the Spirit Wardens (who are already not fans of the crew) and from the Belleweather Crematorium, no less - spirit guards, human security with sparkcraft weapons, plus the crew would need to keep it very quiet so they don't wind up going to war with the Wardens. Cage, in particular, isn't a fan of this - he's a former Warden and knows what they're capable of.
They decide that although they might not make money off it, investigating the disappearance of Strain would be a good way to mend some fences with the Gondoliers. Plus, his boat washed up by the docks, meaning the leviathan hunters probably know something and they're friendly with the crew. They head down to the Docks to ask around.
Siren talks to Noggs, a former shipmate (she's a former leviathan hunter, remember) and Noggs appears willing to talk, but not here. She arranges to meet him for a drink later. One Eye goes to Ink Lane and finds a tattoo artist who is hurting for business. She talks to him about the prospect of a hallucinogenic tattoo, and learns that he put a tattoo on a Gondolier some days back - a warding glyph - but messed it up because the Gondolier didn't tell him that he'd put blood in the ink he supplied. Apparently word had gotten out and they were blaming him. One Eye promised to trade information and try and spread the word that this hadn't been his fault, if he'd help them out, so he drew a sketch of the glyph for her.
Copper wandered through the Menagerie, and found a cage with a weird striped wolf-thing. Captain Rye, the proprietor, tells her it was given to him by a sailor, who called it a "devil wolf" - they used it to kill rats on their ship, but it's hellish fast. Copper, in love, runs off to One Eye and gets her to loan her a coin to buy it (some haggling occurs). She buys the wolf and puts it on a leash.
Siren meets with Noggs, but when he's about to talk, he glances over her shoulder, gets spooked, makes an excuse and leaves. Cage, meanwhile, goes out to where folks sell cheap goods on the Docks, and tries to attune to the spiritual madness in the area, narrowing down what might have happened to Strain. He gets lost in it, though, and winds up wading into the water as the others walk toward him. Siren notices something slithering towards him, and shoots it.
That snaps him out of the reverie and he tries to grab the thing in front of him (thinking maybe it's a ghost), but it wraps tentacles around him and tries to drag him under. Copper, struggling to control her new doggie, rips the monster off him and tosses it back into the drink, and they stagger up on land ("I thought they stayed out at sea!" says Copper. "That was a baby," says Siren. "That's why we don't go in the water.").
The crew confers, and they figure that Strain must have known something was coming. Cage looks at the sketch, but isn't sure what it means - he's a got a hookup, though. Since Strain brought blood to the tattooist, One Eye figures that she'll check in with Jul. Siren and Copper decide to look around and see if they can find out where his boat went.
One Eye heads back to Brightmarket, breaks into Jul's workshop, and rigs it up so that with a flick of a switch she can ruin his supply or spray him with toxic leviathan blood. When he gets back, she threatens him, so he talks - he didn't sell Strain the blood (he doesn't work the Docks), but he heard that a colleague did. Mixing blood into a warding glyph means that you're trying to ward of a particular person or, if the blood is alchemically treated, that some powerful magic is going on, which is what Jul suspects was happening. He has never met Strain, though, and doesn't know what happened there.
Copper and Siren find where the boat washed up, and Copper asks around (loudly) until she learns that a captain named Laudis took it to turn into a lifeboat. They find Laudis' ship and talk with the captain, who tells them that when he found the boat, it was washed up on the shore. Based on when he found it, the boat must have been out in the bay, which is too far from shore for a Gondolier's boat. He found no blood on the boat, just a bunch of broken glass (which he didn't keep). He figures something slithered up out of the sea and dragged Strain down. Laudis also reveals that he lost his left hand (now replaced with a wicked-looking pronged prosthetic) at the blade of the captain of the ship Siren used to crew, so that tenses things up a bit.
Cage talks to Flint, his buddy who traffics in spirits. Flint guesses that, based on the glyph, either Strain was trying to protect himself from something specific and personal or he was taking spirit traffic work on the side. Cage brings Flint back to the lair to have a seance - if Strain is dead, maybe they can summon him (unless he's in a bottle somewhere).
Back at the lair, Cage and Flint (and the others) call up Strain, and see him in the scrying pool, but realize he's still alive. Copper attunes herself a little more closely than she should, and hears the ocean. The shadows make her think she's under something - a bridge, maybe? Also she feels pain on her chest, like her skin is itching.
The crew figures that they know enough to go and find Strain - he got himself into some kind of trouble, and needs rescue. And if that results in a reward from the Gondoliers, well, so be it.
Monday, October 9, 2017
Movie #424: Miss Congeniality
Miss Congeniality is a comedy starring Sandra Bullock, Benjamin Bratt, Candace Bergen, William Shatner, Michael Caine, Ernie Hudson, and Heather Burns.
Grace Hart (Bullock) is an FBI agent who's good at the intellectual aspects of her job, but fucks up on a field assignment and gets a fellow agent shot. She's also not especially femme; she states at one point that she doesn't own a dress...or a brush. When a threat from a prolific terrorist is made against the Miss USA pageant, Hart gets sent undercover as a finalist (after the Miss New Jersey contestant drops out following the revelation that she acted in a porn film, which is awfully convenient - what if it had been the contestant from Alabama or something?) and paired up with a disgraced pageant consultant (Caine) to make her ready for primetime. The middle section of the movie is mostly Gracie bumblefucking her way through becoming beautiful and glamorous, learning Important Lessons about friendship and her own femininity, and finally discovering that the pageant head, Kathy Morningside (Bergen) is the one behind the threats.
Mostly this is your standard lightweight cop movie, made a lot funnier because it's got a good cast. Like a lot of movies of the time (late 90s/early 00s), there's some problematic stuff, but it's not nearly as bad as the Jim Carrey shit we got in the earlier 90s. Sure, Grace's coworker/buddy/crush Matthews (Bratt) is a little uncomfortable when he realizes Mellings (Caine) is gay, but it's never played against Mellings and it just winds up making Matthews look like a dork. It bugs me that the Chief (Hudson) plays into the dumb boss trope (refusing to listen to Hart even when she has points worth listening to).
Actually, as I think about it, that was probably deliberate, possibly making a point about how women in the workplace don't get listened to - McDonald asks Matthews whether there's anything to what she's saying, rather than asking her to expand on her points. Earlier, Matthews blithely takes all of Hart's ideas as his own, with her in the room, and she never even mentions it. Played for laughs, or as something the women in the audience might recognize? I don't know, but two of the credited writers are women, so, take that for what it's worth.
Anyway, Bullock is funny and she and Bratt have some fun chemistry, and Caine is wonderful as always.
My Grade: B+
Rewatch value: High
Next up: Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous
Grace Hart (Bullock) is an FBI agent who's good at the intellectual aspects of her job, but fucks up on a field assignment and gets a fellow agent shot. She's also not especially femme; she states at one point that she doesn't own a dress...or a brush. When a threat from a prolific terrorist is made against the Miss USA pageant, Hart gets sent undercover as a finalist (after the Miss New Jersey contestant drops out following the revelation that she acted in a porn film, which is awfully convenient - what if it had been the contestant from Alabama or something?) and paired up with a disgraced pageant consultant (Caine) to make her ready for primetime. The middle section of the movie is mostly Gracie bumblefucking her way through becoming beautiful and glamorous, learning Important Lessons about friendship and her own femininity, and finally discovering that the pageant head, Kathy Morningside (Bergen) is the one behind the threats.
Mostly this is your standard lightweight cop movie, made a lot funnier because it's got a good cast. Like a lot of movies of the time (late 90s/early 00s), there's some problematic stuff, but it's not nearly as bad as the Jim Carrey shit we got in the earlier 90s. Sure, Grace's coworker/buddy/crush Matthews (Bratt) is a little uncomfortable when he realizes Mellings (Caine) is gay, but it's never played against Mellings and it just winds up making Matthews look like a dork. It bugs me that the Chief (Hudson) plays into the dumb boss trope (refusing to listen to Hart even when she has points worth listening to).
Actually, as I think about it, that was probably deliberate, possibly making a point about how women in the workplace don't get listened to - McDonald asks Matthews whether there's anything to what she's saying, rather than asking her to expand on her points. Earlier, Matthews blithely takes all of Hart's ideas as his own, with her in the room, and she never even mentions it. Played for laughs, or as something the women in the audience might recognize? I don't know, but two of the credited writers are women, so, take that for what it's worth.
Anyway, Bullock is funny and she and Bratt have some fun chemistry, and Caine is wonderful as always.
My Grade: B+
Rewatch value: High
Next up: Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous
Sunday, October 8, 2017
Awesome Games, and Also Character Creation and Game Prep
Hey, people who like games! Do you like games? You know you do.
So, in addition to my own Kickstarter for Undead, the third supplement to Chill 3rd Edition, which sports one hell of a writing team and is made of candy, there are a whole bunch of other awesome game products being funded on Kickstarter right now. It's like a bunch of us just independently decided "hey, October sounds good" and launched the Kick-starts!
(That is, in fact, exactly what happened.)
With that said, I know there's enough money in the world for us all to get funded. So I'm gonna use this character creation project to pimp some of them, including my own. First up is Heavy Metal Thunder Mouse, which I'm going to pimp by making a character for Big Eyes, Small Mouse because HMTM isn't actually available yet, since it's still Kickstartering.
Anyway, HMTM is a Fate-based RPG in which you play mice in motorcycle clubs. I have no idea what more you'd need to convince you, but here's the Kickstarter. It's presently sitting at about $600 below goal, so it's pretty darned close. Back it, and then go back Undead in gratitude for showing you these wonderful things.
The Game: Big Eyes, Small Mouse
The Publisher: Guardians of Order
Degree of Familiarity: None with this game in particular, but I've played and run the underlying system some.
Books Required: I need Big Eyes, Small Mouth, but I have it handy.
That in mind, I think I want to play a mouse who's down on his luck and feeling like the world owes him something. I don't have much more in the way of concept yet; it'll come to me as I go. Figure on his Archetype as Mimic (that is, a mirror of human custom), Background is Urban (he lives in a city), and his Motivation as Hero (superficially he's out for number one, but he's really a good-hearted mouse).
Next step is to determine species, but I know I'm a mouse already. I start with Body, Mind, and Soul all at 3, the Diminutive (3BP) and Easily Distracted - Cheese (1BP) Defects, and Stealth and Urban Survival at 1. I have spent 5 Character Points and 7 Skill Points (figure I start with 30 and 20, respectively).
Now I assign stats, which means I can raise them if I wish. I think I do; I'm below average across the board. In keeping with my idea of making my mouse with a lot of potential, I'll set his stats high and worry about Skills later or not at all. According to the BESM book, 8 is "highly capable," and if I wanted 8s across the board that'd cost me 15 points of my remaining 25. Screw it, let's see what happens.
And now, character attributes. I don't have any of these from my template, so.
I want Divine Relationship, because a) it's in concept and b) you're dumb if you don't. I'll put 5 into it. I'll take Attractive at 3 (I'm a real cute mousie), and I'll take Aura of Command at 3 (I can stand up and lead other mice, I just don't know it yet). I'll take Heightened Awareness at 1, too, which takes me to 12 points spent, which puts me 2 over, which is fine, 'cause I like Defects.
I just need two, so I'll take Marked at one (I'm mostly grey, but I have a black birthmark on my tummy; makes me look mysterious) and Phobia (birds. An owl got my mom. I don't want to talk about it).
Skills, then! I have to be thrifty; I've only got 13 points left and I don't feel like taking more Defects. Assuming the "modern military" Skill costs, I'll take Burglary at 2 (6 points), Urban Tracking at 1 (3 points), and Unarmed Attack at 1 (4 points). That's my 13.
Finally, Derived Traits. Now, this is weird. This version of the game uses Pep and Scratch instead of Health and Damage, to account for the scale, but then there are sections that talk about figuring out Pep taking into account the Diminutive Defect. So far, so good. Except as a mouse, I have Diminutive 3, as does the example character, but he's figured Pep under the Diminutive 1 header. WTF?
Well, I'll just do the same thing. That's Body + Soul (16) x 5 (80). My Energy Points, though I don't necessarily use them, are also 80. Shock is 16, Attack Value is 8, Defense Value is 6.
That just leaves a number and a background. My mouse's name is Montgomery. He lost his mother to an owl when he was young, and grew up in Mousetropolis Orphanage. Turned out when he became an adult, he does odd jobs for a living, but has never really managed to catch a break. Of late, he's turned to light burglary, but the outfit he's with (run by a spider named Desmond "Daddy" Longlegs) is getting more greedy and volatile by the day. Montgomery isn't in this to hurt anyone, and he's just decided that the last job was his last one. Daddy isn't after him, at least not now, but if Montgomery tries to go to the Swiss Cheese Guard singing any songs, well, he'll have an Itsy Bitsy Spider all up on him.
Friday, October 6, 2017
Movie #423: Misery
Misery is a horror movie based on the novel by Stephen King and starring James Caan, Kathy Bates, Lauren Bacall, and Richard Farnsworth. Bates deservedly won an Oscar for her performance.
Paul Sheldon (Caan) is a bestselling author who's made his fame writing romance novels about a 19th century woman named Misery. His latest novel, though, kills her off, enabling him (he hopes) to write something else for a change. He's on his way home with his new, non-Misery manuscript when he gets caught in a blizzard and crashes his car, only to wake up in the home of a former nurse named Annie Wilkes (Bates).
Wilkes is a capable health care provider, and knows Sheldon's work and life inside and out. She's also completely nuts, and (this gets elided a lot when talking about it) a fucking serial killer; she was responsible for a spate of baby deaths in Denver before fleeing to the tiny town where Sheldon goes to write his novels. Wilkes keeps Sheldon prisoner, and things are tense enough, but then Wilkes reads the new Misery novel, realizes Misery is dead, forces Sheldon to burn the only copy of his new book, and forces him to write a new book bringing Misery back from the dead.
In the end, of course, Sheldon turns the tables on her and escapes, but the real meat of the story is the punishment that she inflicts on him, his desperation to escape, and the dependence that he feels on her. Evidently King wrote this book with Wilkes as a stand-in for drugs, and for his own fears that he'd be chained to horror forever. This metaphor comes out a lot more strongly in the book, as does the sheer brutality of the situation (in the book Sheldon becomes hopelessly addicted to painkillers). In the movie, though, the horror is a lot less gruesome but a lot more real because it's more believable. Likewise, the small cast (basically just Caan, Bates, Bacall as Sheldon's agent and Farnsworth as the unfortunate sheriff) contributes to the claustrophobia of the situation.
All it all, it's hard to watch in places but it's one of my favorite horror movies and one of the best King adaptations.
My grade: A
Rewatch value: High
Next up: Miss Congeniality
Paul Sheldon (Caan) is a bestselling author who's made his fame writing romance novels about a 19th century woman named Misery. His latest novel, though, kills her off, enabling him (he hopes) to write something else for a change. He's on his way home with his new, non-Misery manuscript when he gets caught in a blizzard and crashes his car, only to wake up in the home of a former nurse named Annie Wilkes (Bates).
Wilkes is a capable health care provider, and knows Sheldon's work and life inside and out. She's also completely nuts, and (this gets elided a lot when talking about it) a fucking serial killer; she was responsible for a spate of baby deaths in Denver before fleeing to the tiny town where Sheldon goes to write his novels. Wilkes keeps Sheldon prisoner, and things are tense enough, but then Wilkes reads the new Misery novel, realizes Misery is dead, forces Sheldon to burn the only copy of his new book, and forces him to write a new book bringing Misery back from the dead.
In the end, of course, Sheldon turns the tables on her and escapes, but the real meat of the story is the punishment that she inflicts on him, his desperation to escape, and the dependence that he feels on her. Evidently King wrote this book with Wilkes as a stand-in for drugs, and for his own fears that he'd be chained to horror forever. This metaphor comes out a lot more strongly in the book, as does the sheer brutality of the situation (in the book Sheldon becomes hopelessly addicted to painkillers). In the movie, though, the horror is a lot less gruesome but a lot more real because it's more believable. Likewise, the small cast (basically just Caan, Bates, Bacall as Sheldon's agent and Farnsworth as the unfortunate sheriff) contributes to the claustrophobia of the situation.
All it all, it's hard to watch in places but it's one of my favorite horror movies and one of the best King adaptations.
My grade: A
Rewatch value: High
Next up: Miss Congeniality
Thursday, October 5, 2017
Promethean: Down to the River Through a Van
Monday was Promethean, but I've been too busy redlining a Promethean and running a Kickstarter that you should totally back and share.
Anyway! Last time Red kinda kicked some ass, and we wound up with Feather, Grimm, and Matt going to a scrapyard to track him down, Avalon and Enoch dead and at the River of Memory, and Skip hanging with Jesse at the camp. Let's start there.
Skip and Jesse get to the swamp and start looking around. Jesse's left eye goes all white and starlit, and Skip activates Ephemeral Flesh and therefore looks like a ugly Promethean. This makes Jesse stare a bit, and Skip remembers what Sicky had said about Disquiet affecting werewolves. They look about, and don't see any spiritual turbulence. They do find a place where two trees grow together forming what looks like an archway, which Jesse identifies as a gate to the Underworld. He can open it, he says, if they want to see where it goes. Skip agrees, and Jesse performs a ritual that involves biting the head off a snake, and they enter a cavern.
Following water trickling downwards, they come to a fork in the cavern. At the split is a tableau - a man strapped to a table. Other people appear, bearing hatchets and saws and machetes and hack him to pieces, and then the scene resets. Skip contemplates this, and realizes that the blood is flowing one way but the hate is flowing another. He decides that Red's focus on blood was incidental, it's his hate that's important, so heads that way. He also feels the stirrings of Vitriol, and realizes that if he could harness that hate, he could achieve a milestone.
Meanwhile, Avalon and Enoch stroll along the River of Memory and find a passage, which leads them to a cavern full of cobwebs. Enoch reaches out to pluck one, and a skeletal hand stops him. He needs to say the name of the person he's looking for, the Kerberos explains, and then he can follow the echoes...if that person is in the Underworld. They plucked a web and asked for Byron Odell Jr. (Red's youngest son, the one that committed suicide via electrocution) and followed the echoes around several corners, down some corridors, and to a frothing, raging river - Styx, the River of Hate.
Also meanwhile, up in the living world, Grimm, Matt, Feather, and Sicky checked out the Marceau Scrapyard. Matt, en route, used Vitriol to calcify the Externalize Alembic, and in so doing achieved the fermentatio milestone (fix an Alembic). Matt picked the lock on the gate, while Grimm (having reassumed Cuprum and therefore regained access to all of his previous Transmutations) turned into a rat to scout around inside. He heard from some other rats that the guy with the hatchet was in the trailer. Feather, meanwhile, dithered around trying to come up with a plan (grabbing her Beat for her Refinement Condition), and Matt looked around and found a blood trail leading back into the scrapyard.
They followed the trail (Grimm activated Bloodhound's Nose and confirmed it was Red's blood) and found a van in the back of the property. The door was open...and it was an Avernian Gate. They couldn't have missed Red by much. They checked out the trailer, but Matt noticed a wire when he started to open the door and they decide to leave it. Feather calls Mort and tells him where they area, but they don't want to wait. Into the Underworld they go.
They follow the blood trail, and everyone winds up meeting outside a cavern on the River of Hate. Skip and Avalon both drink from the river, and find that Wrath and Justice replace their Torment and Elpis, respectively. And then Feather is attacked by blood.
The blood-monster flies out of the cavern and slams into her, melting her flesh. Enoch uses Alchemicus to freeze it (and gets like 7 successes, so it's frozen), and Avalon punches it out of sheer anger. This doesn't do much, but it does fulfill her Torment, which, in turn, gets her Willpower and Pyros back, but also puts her into Torment. Skip punches the bloodsicle and cracks it in half, and then something shoots at them from the cavern.
Jesse changes into a big honkin' wolf and charges into the dark, and the Prometheans follow. There they see Red, armed with a shotgun; this ghostly son Dennis armed with a rifle; and his other son Byron chained to the wall with live wires. Enoch runs over to free Byron, figured maybe that'll help. Grimm shoots Red, and Avalon hurls lightning over Jesse's head and hits Dennis. His ghostly form explodes, but this apparently angers Jesse, who changes into giant wolf-man form and attacks Feather. Feather, far too quick for this, keeps Jesse busy.
Skip punches Red and knocks him right the fuck down, and Grimm shoots him again, killing him. The blood-thing flies back in and they see blood tendrils reaching out, but then Avalon summons up lightning again and fries it against the wall. About now, Enoch manages to free Byron, who stumbles for the entrance. Enoch helps him out, and then the cavern starts to collapse in on itself.
Feather lures Jesse out (still frenzied), and Skip tackles him and holds him down while he calms himself out of the rage. The cavern vanishes, with Red and his geist, both death, both now gone. The whole experience leads Skip to completion of a milestone (fight a non-Promethean supernatural being and survive) and mastery of the Exemplar Role, and therefore the Ferrum Refinement.
The throng (and Jesse) make their way back to the surface. Enoch and Avalon, of course, vanish and their bodies heal up a bit, but they're in the trunk. The Prometheans regroup, and Mort confirms that Red is dead. The throng heads back to town and the storefront, and Avalon, having seen justice done, calms down out of Torment. Something eats at her, though, something else that she's forgetting...
Anyway! Last time Red kinda kicked some ass, and we wound up with Feather, Grimm, and Matt going to a scrapyard to track him down, Avalon and Enoch dead and at the River of Memory, and Skip hanging with Jesse at the camp. Let's start there.
Skip and Jesse get to the swamp and start looking around. Jesse's left eye goes all white and starlit, and Skip activates Ephemeral Flesh and therefore looks like a ugly Promethean. This makes Jesse stare a bit, and Skip remembers what Sicky had said about Disquiet affecting werewolves. They look about, and don't see any spiritual turbulence. They do find a place where two trees grow together forming what looks like an archway, which Jesse identifies as a gate to the Underworld. He can open it, he says, if they want to see where it goes. Skip agrees, and Jesse performs a ritual that involves biting the head off a snake, and they enter a cavern.
Following water trickling downwards, they come to a fork in the cavern. At the split is a tableau - a man strapped to a table. Other people appear, bearing hatchets and saws and machetes and hack him to pieces, and then the scene resets. Skip contemplates this, and realizes that the blood is flowing one way but the hate is flowing another. He decides that Red's focus on blood was incidental, it's his hate that's important, so heads that way. He also feels the stirrings of Vitriol, and realizes that if he could harness that hate, he could achieve a milestone.
Meanwhile, Avalon and Enoch stroll along the River of Memory and find a passage, which leads them to a cavern full of cobwebs. Enoch reaches out to pluck one, and a skeletal hand stops him. He needs to say the name of the person he's looking for, the Kerberos explains, and then he can follow the echoes...if that person is in the Underworld. They plucked a web and asked for Byron Odell Jr. (Red's youngest son, the one that committed suicide via electrocution) and followed the echoes around several corners, down some corridors, and to a frothing, raging river - Styx, the River of Hate.
Also meanwhile, up in the living world, Grimm, Matt, Feather, and Sicky checked out the Marceau Scrapyard. Matt, en route, used Vitriol to calcify the Externalize Alembic, and in so doing achieved the fermentatio milestone (fix an Alembic). Matt picked the lock on the gate, while Grimm (having reassumed Cuprum and therefore regained access to all of his previous Transmutations) turned into a rat to scout around inside. He heard from some other rats that the guy with the hatchet was in the trailer. Feather, meanwhile, dithered around trying to come up with a plan (grabbing her Beat for her Refinement Condition), and Matt looked around and found a blood trail leading back into the scrapyard.
They followed the trail (Grimm activated Bloodhound's Nose and confirmed it was Red's blood) and found a van in the back of the property. The door was open...and it was an Avernian Gate. They couldn't have missed Red by much. They checked out the trailer, but Matt noticed a wire when he started to open the door and they decide to leave it. Feather calls Mort and tells him where they area, but they don't want to wait. Into the Underworld they go.
They follow the blood trail, and everyone winds up meeting outside a cavern on the River of Hate. Skip and Avalon both drink from the river, and find that Wrath and Justice replace their Torment and Elpis, respectively. And then Feather is attacked by blood.
The blood-monster flies out of the cavern and slams into her, melting her flesh. Enoch uses Alchemicus to freeze it (and gets like 7 successes, so it's frozen), and Avalon punches it out of sheer anger. This doesn't do much, but it does fulfill her Torment, which, in turn, gets her Willpower and Pyros back, but also puts her into Torment. Skip punches the bloodsicle and cracks it in half, and then something shoots at them from the cavern.
Jesse changes into a big honkin' wolf and charges into the dark, and the Prometheans follow. There they see Red, armed with a shotgun; this ghostly son Dennis armed with a rifle; and his other son Byron chained to the wall with live wires. Enoch runs over to free Byron, figured maybe that'll help. Grimm shoots Red, and Avalon hurls lightning over Jesse's head and hits Dennis. His ghostly form explodes, but this apparently angers Jesse, who changes into giant wolf-man form and attacks Feather. Feather, far too quick for this, keeps Jesse busy.
Skip punches Red and knocks him right the fuck down, and Grimm shoots him again, killing him. The blood-thing flies back in and they see blood tendrils reaching out, but then Avalon summons up lightning again and fries it against the wall. About now, Enoch manages to free Byron, who stumbles for the entrance. Enoch helps him out, and then the cavern starts to collapse in on itself.
Feather lures Jesse out (still frenzied), and Skip tackles him and holds him down while he calms himself out of the rage. The cavern vanishes, with Red and his geist, both death, both now gone. The whole experience leads Skip to completion of a milestone (fight a non-Promethean supernatural being and survive) and mastery of the Exemplar Role, and therefore the Ferrum Refinement.
The throng (and Jesse) make their way back to the surface. Enoch and Avalon, of course, vanish and their bodies heal up a bit, but they're in the trunk. The Prometheans regroup, and Mort confirms that Red is dead. The throng heads back to town and the storefront, and Avalon, having seen justice done, calms down out of Torment. Something eats at her, though, something else that she's forgetting...
Sunday, October 1, 2017
Happy Sunday! Promethean Notes
Been redlining a Promethean book today, will continue redlining said book later, am now going to take some notes for the Promethean game I'm running tomorrow, players stay out, you know the dealie.
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