Books
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Written by Russ Crandall
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Saturday, 10 April 2010 22:16 |
It's a war that's been waged for eons, which started with one simple question - "What are better, books or film adaptations of books?" - and to this day books have won almost every time. Of course, there are some exceptions to this, and by that I mean films like A Clockwork Orange, Fight Club, Jaws, and Trainspotting. That being said, I recently found out that a favorite book of mine, Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, had been adapted into a 1999 film called Instinct that I neglected to see when it first came out for obvious reasons. The obvious reasons, obviously, are a) the film looked like garbage and b) the film is probably garbage.
I decided to watch it, if only because I was curious to see how the film handled Ishmael's philosophical take on our world. It's not every day that a Hollywood film tries to tackle such subjects as mankind's role on this planet, overpopulation issues, and the end of our civilization. Turns out they didn't really know how to tackle it. The film spends about five minutes discussing some of the issues raised in Ishmael - mainly, our move from tribal societies to civilization - but barely skims the full breadth of Daniel Quinn's novel (and two sequels). However, I still found it to be a fairly entertaining film, and my wife really liked it.
Looking back, it's been ten years since I first read Ishmael and its message, while overly Darwinist at times, is something that everyone could stand to read. I won't get into the book's details because it's a discovery you should make on your own (however, there is this thing called "Wikipedia" if you're really curious). I'm glad that somebody at least tried to bring Ishmael to a larger audience; I just wish there was a little bit more of it in the actual film. |
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Written by Tyler Miller
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Tuesday, 09 February 2010 05:24 |
As we transition from our old site to this new one, we've decided to bring along some of our favorite posts as well. Enjoy our trip down memory lane.
For a very short time I worked in a white tablecloth restaurant that could be called "fine dining". It was known for its high quality dry-aged beef and took special pride in the wine pairings. For anyone who's not familiar with it, the goal of pairing is to find the right wine for the right steak. E.g.-- Cabernet Sauvignon ages well in oak and often has a sweet, smokey taste. This flavor goes perfectly with red meat but not so much with poultry of fish (which are usually paired with a white wine).
Why is this important? The idea of pairing is that by combining two ingredients the attributes of each will compliment the other and turn a plate of food in to a one of a king meal. Let's see how this applies to video games.
A few months back I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy. At about that same time I also dove back in to the Capital Wastes with the new DLC for Fallout 3. I was halfway through this bleak, depressing book when I loaded up my old save and-- The Pitt never looked so full of despair. It was like I'd been playing the game with blinders on up until that point. As much as I love playing Fallout, my mind can drift when I play it (specially during the long treks to those un-quicktravelable locations). At the same time, whenever I let my mind wander - in traffic, at work - it was always The Road that I thought about.
We've all read a sad story, or a tense chapter and felt affected after we put the book down-- it's the same as playing too much Tetris and seeing falling blocks everywhere. Perfect example; pull an all-nighter with Left 4 Dead, then read some of World War Z and tell me if the next day you don't absent-mindedly examine your workplace for prospective safe houses. A good book will refuse to let you keep your mind off the story after you close the cover, and a good game will refuse to let you take your eyes off the screen while you play it. The Road had put me in the headspace of characters in a post-apocalyptic world. By doing that it gave more of an impact to playing Fallout. I guess I started taking the game a little more seriously.
After that I turned the difficulty up a little to make it feel like there was more risk to my actions. I started playing it smarter, like the Father character in the Road. I checked 360 degrees every few paces conserving as much ammunition as I could and bypassing every enemy that didn't detect me. Instead of seeing Fallout from the perspective of "I can do anything to anyone and just reload the game", I saw it closer to "anything can happen to me, I should be careful".
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Written by Russ Crandall
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Thursday, 04 February 2010 05:11 |
As we transition from our old site to this new one, we've decided to bring along some of our favorite posts as well. Enjoy our trip down memory lane.
Since this is a blog by nerds for nerds, I thought I would have our first "My Faves" post concerning books (without pictures) to be about sci-fi books. I'm not a very big sci-fi fan, so my collection falls more under the mainstream, social-commentary sort of novels:
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