TIME FLIES?
By Alex Ness
August 7, 2022
LIVING IN DANGEROUS TIMES
War, Plague, Hunger, Pestilence do not offer comfort. We've entered a period of human existence where the numbers of people, the speed of transport, and the global economy, even in a period of war, combine to make threats more dangerous, more contagious, and ever more fatal. Monkey Pox has a 10% fatality rate. War, even when aimed at solely military targets has a much higher fatality rate for those who are victims. The grains grown and sold for export in Ukraine and Russia are now being held up and held back from export. People dependent upon such grain for staples and daily nutrition, are, at least, going to be hungry, if they don't starve to death. Cyber attacks, human trafficking, and far more issues than I could list, all act as pestilence upon the human form. In our present world we've much to worry about. We've much to endure, resist and survive.
Last of the Mohicans is based upon a great novel by James Fenimore Cooper by the same name. The events of the book happen upon the backdrop of the French and Indian War. While I do think that this movie is quite good, stirring and sad, it also has some flaws. Some of the flaws include odd character choices and behaviors, and jumps in time or geography. These might well have been results of movie edits or simply bad film making. I suspect the first, but fear the second.
Dr. Strangelove, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb When my best friends in high school watched this movie, they returned to school on Monday and immediately informed me how I'd missed a great movie. And it is that, but they talked about it for weeks and weeks after, and that was annoying. Stanley Kubrick's genius is visible along with the magnificent acting of George C. Scott and Peter Sellers. The madness of mutual assured destruction is plainly visible too, and the story revels in the insanity of the concept. It has humor, it is darkly poignant and lingers in memory for numerous reasons.
Threads The aftermath of nuclear war and the reconstructing life from threads in the UK, is deeply painful viewing experience. The work is one that I was moved by immediately, and in ways more than most I watched of similar outlook. It wasn't as graphic as it could have been, as it was a television based release, but it was nonetheless harrowing. It is one of the best works of its era, regarding the sort of story and setting used.
Seven Days in May This work was said to be made with the encouragement of John F. Kennedy who feared similar events happening in the United States. This is the story of a military general who believes that the US President is too weak to face off against the communists abroad, and thus develops a plan that involves many participants, from many different areas of the military and perhaps even within greater society. Would the US accept a coup attempt? Well it was something that might have almost happened before as well. JFK wasn't the first president hated by people with power, ambition, or money.
Schindler's List I don't really need to describe this movie much, most people are familiar. It features one man who despite his own personal flaws, realized that the Nazi desire to make the Jews race extinct was the height of human evil. He hired many Jews, whenever possible and made his factory one to be considered a vital war industry. By doing so, he saved many from the ovens. War movies can be documentaries, or based upon real events, but the Holocaust is less about a war as it was a war crime.
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom If you choose to view this film you must be prepared. It is vulgar in ways, it is graphic in violence and sexual acts, and it is also known to utilize brutality in telling of the tale. It was banned by some countries. However, it is also highly literate, deep in the artistic imagery and ideas, and makes use of philosophy, great artworks, great literature and ancient greatness. There is nothing else like this, because, I think, it could be considered a serious pornographic film, but the pornographic aspects of the film are not there for simply prurient interests. I am not of the belief that I could watch this film again, but I am glad that I did watch it once.
Grave of the Fireflies The story collects the experiences of a boy who survived the Kobe Japan firebombing by US bombers in World War Two. The bombing and fires led to his loss of two sisters, and father. Starvation, disease and human madness are all on display. The story is based upon the story "Hotaru no haka" which was a semi autobiography, and is brutal in the reality it presents. It is a beautiful but highly sad work.
Điện Biên Phủ A French made film, featuring the final battle of the French Indochina War. The situation of the French was desperate. They needed to finish their war, in victory or leave. The French command chose to create a fortress system in a region that would lure the Vietminh into combat, and final battle. The film is a classic, with dialogue and acting that is fantastic, but it is more than a war movie, it shows how the war was to be transferred from French hands to American. So, if the war was a tragedy or wrong, it was made worse for the fact that it did not lead to a quick resolution and end to political divide of the regions of Vietnam.
RIDICULOUSNESS AND RADIATION: Crazy fun and dark games
CARDS AGAINST HUMANITY has a grotesque humor, is cynically dark, and can be raucously fun experience. It requires more than one person, perhaps to share within the event a creative yet wicked sort of fun. Every time I've seen some of the combinations of cards, it makes me laugh, but I know people who are horribly offended by the game. Oh well. It is a dark time, and this is a harmless silly entry into the macabre.
PLANET BUSTERS This game appeared in Dragon magazine, and it bore a resemblance to the serials of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, with art that was far more stylistic than realistic. The two people I played it with, loved the game along with me, and it provided hours of space wars and exploding planets. It is available from a number of online sellers, and was put out by Troll Lord Games.
NUCLEAR WAR Flying Buffalo Games had a number of products that were quite fun. Owner Rick Loomis sent me a deck of the card game Nuclear War for review. It is an easy to play, easy to learn game, with a great degree of edge, but it is never scary or realistic, being more of a game that uses the fearful impact of such an event, (Nuclear War) and using game mechanics to make it a swiftly played fun experience. To me that is a great game.
HOL: HUMAN OCCUPIED LANDFILL White Wolf was famous in RPGing for being a new kind of RPGs, and while the fiction that accompanied the games were attractive to me, I never really had an interest in going further. Black Dog Studio was involved in the game, released through WW. But HOL is a spoof utilizing the very worst of human nature, humans are trapped, imprisoned, or stranded upon a penal colony, and players must try to survive first, and perhaps thereafter escape. There is a lot to hate here, as it an open parody of the modern RPG form, but it pokes fun at its own senses too, so for those who saw it as snobbish or simply vile, might have missed the point of it. I cannot say I loved it, but I found it humorous in outlook and in the stories of those who played it.
BUNNIES & BURROWS Almost everyone who plays games in the RPG world, is familiar with the name convention, of Dungeons and Dragons, Chivalry and Sorcery, Tunnels and Trolls... bunnies & burrows was a clever use of inspiration from Watership Down. It was a book featuring events from the perspective of rabbits and the dangers they face just to survive. If you could place yourself into such a mind, and setting, bunnies & burrows, which has come out from numerous companies, with different edits, can offer a complete new, different, and if not funny, clever and generously time consuming in a good way. If you did not find yourself moved by the concept of Watership Down, you might just not get it.
GAMMA WORLD
When asked what weird game I liked the most, and while you can spend a lot of time defining weird, since there are tons of things the world sees as weird that RPGers see as part of a game. Gamma World was a game that almost required me to use just the concept and apply other game mechanics to it for the players to enjoy it. The concept was that a great disaster of radiation and change happened, whether by war, natural disaster, or unknown impact event changed the world. The survivors of whatever happened and successive generations are trying to make their way through the new world, thread by thread trying to weave a new world, despite the many challenges. But remnant tech, racist tribes, and radioactive weird beings all offer danger to any life.
METAMORPHOSIS ALPHA
I only played this game once, but it was an enormously fun hoot. It features adventures on a bizarre world, that you eventually learn to have been a planet sized space ship. Radiation, weird evolution, bizarre scientific dangers all combine to make the adventure unlike most any you might have a chance to experience. It was seriously great, but I understand that it might well have been so great due to the game master, and his mastery over all the elements of play. As games go, it was a rather small game with a large fun concept.
I
can be found on Facebook, Twitter or through email
Alexanderness63@gmail.com. I accept hard copies, so when you inquire at
any of these places, I'll follow through by telling you my street
address. I no longer have a post box, although I regret that. It was a
crushing defeat to no longer have a p.o. box, when I came to realize I
was getting so little product it made no sense to pay for the privilege
to not receive mail at both my home and at the post office. If you send
hard copies for review I will always review them, but if you prefer to
send pdf or ebooks to my email, I will review these at my discretion. I
don't share my pdf/ebooks, so you can avoid worry that I'd dispense them
for free to others.
MY LINKS:
My Poetry AlexNessPoetry.Blogspot.Com
Published Work AlexNessPoetry.Blogspot.Com/2007/01/My-Work.html
Amazon Page Amazon.com/author/AlexNess
Cthulhu Horror CthulhuDarkness.Blogspot.Com
Atlantis & Lost Worlds AlexNessLostWorlds.Blogspot.Com
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"It will be found, eventually, that just as impurities in water become radioactive from transmuted uranium, impurities in thought become radioactive from transmuted facts and figures lurking in the pitchblende of the mind." EB White
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